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Women and Girls Can Initiative

managed by Gertrude N.

About us

Women and Girls Can Initiative (WaGCI)

Established as a Christian feminist movement, the Women and Girls Can Initiative (WaGCI) was created to do something unheard of at the time: to deliver assistance, mobilize strategic resources and identify impoverished women and girls that can contribute to elevating women and girls voices and solutions across race, faith, age and class in communities of the region.
Our founding woman believes strongly in women and girls’ collective power to ignite positive spiritual, health, social and economic change. She also knows that women and girls who face discrimination and inequity in their own lives have the wisdom and expertise to advance social change that would benefit everyone.
Understanding all that, she began an initiative that would seed and strengthen women and girls’ grassroots lives around the region and strive to create a vibrant, inclusive Christian feminist movement in which everyone’s voice is visible, valued and heard—a movement to thrive for generations to come.
When our Lord Jesus Christ stated that He came so that mankind would have full, abundant life, He indeed included women in that statement. Only cultural and social prejudices and biases in different societies have tended to exclude women and girls from enjoying that divine blessing like men do.
Recognizing the existence of these inequities against women and girls, Women and Girls Can Initiative [WaGCI] was formed to address these inequities and enable women and girls in Masaka District of Uganda live a full meaningful life free from health, cultural, economical and social encumbrances set up by men, just as our Lord Jesus Intended.
WaGCI is Christian based and embraces the values of the gospel of Jesus Christ but welcomes members from all religious denominations and atheists: the only credential one has to have is being a woman or a girl. Race and ethnicity have no relevance in WaGCI ideals or activities.
GRACIOUS HOME OF HOPE
Gracious Home of Hope in Mpugwe Trading Centre neighborhood of Masaka Municipality is the heart of our project, where needy orphaned and vulnerable girl children will be welcomed into the Gracious Home of Hope family. The home will not an orphanage; it is the first step in a child’s journey from life on the streets, suffering, self denial and abandonment to a unique place within the Gracious Home of Hope family.
Current Projects under Gracious Home of Hope will be:
Marcia Ann Mims Junior School
Shuntai Artisan’s Guild
Kellie Frazier Kindergarten
Our Gracious Home of Hope will change the lives of needy orphaned and vulnerable girl and boys children and few displaced women who occupy the margins of our society. Our family based care model will successfully addresses more than their basic needs. The Gracious Home of Hope reunites extended families, sustains weakened households and rebuilds families affected by HIV/AIDS, domestic violence issues, and other diseases. The Gracious Home of Hope helps reweave the fabric of a society overburdened by extreme poverty, food instability and stretched community resources – one family at a time.
In Uganda, the consequences of poverty, domestic violence and disease strain families and entire communities. Children whose parents are chronically ill or living with HIV and stricken by poverty are at greatest risk. In many instances, a sibling group that loses one or both parents finds themselves alone with the eldest child acting as head-of-household, caring for younger brothers and sisters.
They have no legal protection, and often, dishonest adults force them from their family homes onto the streets and child labor while they are still grieving the loss or negligence of their parents and bruises of domestic violence. In Greater Masaka alone, there are ten thousands orphaned and vulnerable girl children living with no basic needs like food, clothes, education and medication.
Typically, eldest needy children continue to live on their own, where they suffer from hunger, abuse and predation. In response to this tragic situation, Gracious Home of Hope intends to reach out to teenagers, large sibling groups and individual girl children, welcoming them into care and legal protection at the Gracious Home of Hope.
Existing Social agencies and the local government provide few social safety nets for vulnerable children or domestically abused women. The social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS leaves widowed women particularly vulnerable; they do not have access to education, training, health care or economic opportunity. They live in abject poverty, often times begging others in villages with their children in tow, or doing menial labor for unscrupulous employers. At Gracious Home of Hope, we plan to reach out marginalized women welcoming them into our Shuntai Artisan’s Guild and helping them regain a position of dignity and respect through earning a living.
It is hard to imagine the level of abject grief and poverty endured by Uganda’s orphaned, vulnerable children and displaced women. Traditional development assistance programs and anti-poverty initiatives address their immediate need for food and shelter, but these programs do not adequately respond to Uganda’s long-term need for a cohesive society. The affects of HIV/AIDS, poverty and domestic violence issues and other diseases have eviscerated an entire generation of the adult population, interrupting the course of Uganda’s cultural traditions, values and family structures along the way. How can a society grow and prosper when its children are raising themselves, and mothers are begging on the streets?
Future Programs
Vocational Training programs
This training center will involve other proven training programs to train girls and adults from nearby villages in job oriented skills. All the training will be done in mother tongue (i.e. Luganda) so that training is made easy and lively.
Other vocational skills training programs may include Carpentry, Plumbing, Electrical work, Leather work, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Mechanic, Beautician course, Tailoring & Embroidery and Baking.

Contact

p.o.box 1922
256
Masaka
Uganda

Gertrude N.

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