Gender and Community Development
StepUp teaches people how to maintain a clean and safe home, helping to prevent the spread of disease. Saving enough money to build a pit latrine (toilet) is a key part of this step. Alongside farming ,families will need to learn how to build a pit latrine as well as dig rubbish pits and build drying racks for dishes.
Families subsequently gain knowledge of the importance of maternal health and the risks of HIV/AIDS. With the families learning, for the first time, how to save money and to budget, they can now start to think long-term and dream big, like building a house.
Underlying the success of StepUp is an emphasis on working together as a community and promoting women as leaders. With a support network and strong community leaders, the families can continue to capitalise on StepUp long after they complete their last training session.
Education is crucial to a person and a community’s future success, that is why StepUp works with parents to ensure both their sons and daughters attend school and support those parents whom themselves need help with adult literacy. StepUp also provides scholarships to the best performing children so they may continue with their higher education.
Education is one of the most critical areas of empowerment for women. It is also an area that offers some of the clearest examples of discrimination women suffer. Among children not attending school there are twice as many girls as boys, and among illiterate adults there are twice as many women as men.
Offering girls basic education is one sure way of giving them much greater power to enable them make genuine choices over the kinds of lives they wish to lead.
There is a proverb which says, “if we educate a boy, we educate one person. If we educate a girl, we educate a family and a whole nation.” A girl sent to school is far more likely to ensure that her children also receive education. Investing in a girl’s education is investing more in a nation.
The Challenge while the rate of primary and secondary education is climbing in Uganda, there are still many factors turning girls away from school. Inadequate school infrastructure (classrooms and furniture), sexual harassment and gender based violence, pregnancy, and household responsibilities such as cooking and caring for younger siblings are all major deterrents for girls in Uganda.
