Gender and Community Services Department

Mission: �To empower and facilitate communities, particularly the vulnerable groups, to realize and harness their potential for purposeful and sustainable development�.

The directorate is composed of two departments:

		Gender, Welfare & Community Services Department
		Production & Marketing Department.

The department of Gender and Community Services is concerned with the development of society in totality. Efforts are directed at the development of the total potential of people in order to uplift their wellbeing in all aspects of their lives.

Development involves the participation of people in bring about changes in the individual persons, groups or communities because it is believed that people are the masters of their own destiny and this is the most sustainable approach other than handouts. The services of this sector aim at reaching out mostly to people who live in poverty or are unable to access the basic human needs, or those whose basic human rights are trampled upon.

The department renders services through three major programs of community development, probation and social welfare, and labour promotion. The services are basically categorized as:

		Prevention
		Intervention
		Remedial or alternative care
		Advocacy
		Rehabilitation

All the services are aimed at promoting the development of people�s potential for sustainable development. The Community Services encourages collective empowerment, facilitating processes that help the poor, vulnerable and marginalized to become self reliant, as well as protecting their human rights.

The services build capacities of people to address causes and effects of poverty and vulnerability.

CORE SERVICES

Some of the core services provided include:

1.	Gender Mainstreaming: Services Department

This department is responsible for raising awareness and addressing gender issues in KCC�s programs and activities. It assesses the implications, for women and men, of KCC�s planned activities or programs and where there is a gap, raises the concerns of

women and men, and work towards integrating the concerns in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programs (e.g. LGDP). This is aimed at ensuring that both men and women benefit equally i.e. gender equality.

While mainstreaming gender special attention is put on gender specific activities and affirmative action, to assist the women or men who may be in a disadvantaged position e.g. culture favoured men education as opposed to women education.

Therefore the Functional Adult Literacy is attended mostly by women in order to reduce the illiteracy levels and effects, to enable them participate in and benefit equally from development programs and poverty reduction initiatives.

2.	Probation and Welfare Services

Kampala City being the only city in the country is a centre of attraction basically for social and industrial development oriented people. This leads to a high rural-urban influx of people, some of whom are ill equipped for urban life. Those who fail to cope with the city demands become street children, beggars, destitute, and law breakers.

The services undertaken include social rehabilitation and resettlement of the affected persons, in order to mould them into responsible and productive citizens. Secondly, families and communities are also counselled to accept the victims back.

The key strategies applied include:

		Operationalization of the Children�s Act 2000 by first of all training Child Rights Advocates at Parish level;
		Raising awareness about human rights;Department.
		Registering and monitoring of NGOs/CBOs;
		Promoting juvenile justice for children in conflict with the law.

Community Service Program:

The Central Government put in place a program code-named �Community Service Program�. It is for enabling offenders with minor cases to serve their sentences outside prisons. Such offenders are entrusted to the probation officer who counsels and monitors them very closely. The major benefit is the decongestion of the prisons, and also helps the offender and his/her family to remain together. Thirdly, the offenders provide free labour services to communal facilities e.g. slashing compounds of Health units.

3.	Youth Activities

The population of youths in Kampala City is higher than that of adults. The basic concern is to develop and design sustainable socio-economic programs targeting areas of entrepreneurship, life skills and HIV/AIDS, sports, environment management etc. Currently there are over fifty youth groups in the city.

4.	Social Rehabilitation Programmes For The Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) And The Elderly

The programs basically aim at raising awareness about the plight of these communities, empowering them to acquire knowledge and skills to participate in development programs and self reliance.

Various groups are formed according to areas of interest to serve as channels of the programs. Special emphasis is put on active participation of the target groups when identifying their needs, planning to address them and implementation.

There are many income generating activities (IGAs) that are initiated by these persons, either in groups or individually. They need a lot of technical and financial support but, unfortunately, Kampala City Council�s support is inadequate and yet this is essential for building self-reliance, self confidence and talent development.

5.	Poverty Eradication Initiatives

Poverty eradication (or alleviation) is one of the Government�s priority programs. Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) was developed to address poverty related issues, supported by the Poverty Action Fund (PAF) on the basis of the five pillars.

This directorate of Gender, Community Services and Production is the key to the success of PEAP. The programs implemented by this directorate aim at addressing, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) e.g. increasing the poor people�s ability to earn higher incomes, and increasing the quality of life.

The main programs for poverty eradication include:

		Functional Adult Literacy (FAL)
		Income Generating Activities (IGAs)
		Placing job seekers in gainful employment
		Urban Agriculture (crop, animals and fisheries farming � production) .
		Promotion of Cooperative societies
		Gender mainstreaming � addressing inequality issues
		HIV/AIDS prevention and counseling.
		Women Emancipation and empowerment with knowledge, skills and resources.

6.	Advocacy For Human Rights

The 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, together with the Labour Laws, emphasize workers� rights and employer�s obligations.

In order to achieve these, the Labour office handles workers complaints and grievances.

A Human Rights Desk is being setup to handle cases of human abuse in the general public.

PRODUCTION AND MARKETING DEPARTMENT

Urban Agriculture:

1.	Introduction

Urban agriculture is an activity that produces, processes, markets food and other products, on land and water in urban and peri-urban areas, applying intensive production methods, and (re)using natural resources and urban wastes, to yield a diversity of crops and livestock. Urban agriculture has for a long time been a coping mechanism by the urban poor to ensure the availability of food but is now indeed a viable economic activity under taken by people of different levels of economic status and contributing enormously to the broad economy and benefiting city dwellers.

2.	Magnitude and contribution of urban agriculture to livelihoods.

70% of poultry products, 45% of vegetables and 91% of mushrooms consumed in the city are produced by urban farmers.

20% of house holds recycle and utilize biodegradable domestic waste.

50% of urban house holds supplement their incomes through urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA).

80% of the farming population in Kampala is involved in urban agriculture, have backyard kitchen gardens (crop production) and 75% of these are women.

40% of the food consumed in Kampala was produced with in city boundaries.

Farmers recycle organic waste for various purposes e.g. livestock feeds, compost manure.

Myths

However, there have been myths/negative perceptions associated with UA such as:

� Urban agriculture increases health hazards (spread of mosquitoes, bugs, micro-organisms, jiggers);

� Urban agriculture increases the rate of physical car accidents e.g. caused by animals roaming in the city streets

� Urban agriculture paves way for psychosocial hazards such as theft, stress;

� Urban agriculture is an environmental hazard (pollution, gaseous emissions, liquid and solid wastes);

� Urban agriculture increases silting and blocking of roadside drainage channels.

4.	Demystifying the myths.

In an attempt to demystify the myths, Environmental Alert (EA) implemented a 5-year Urban Food Security and Nutrition Project in Makindye Division in the parishes of Buziga, Salaama, Bukasa, Ggaba, Kabalagala and Kibuli. The project aimed at improving sustainable agriculture for increased food security, nutrition and child care, incomes and environmental health. It benefited over 700 households and created a lot of impact in terms of improving the urban farming communities� livelihood.

In the same project Environmental Alert worked with Kampala City Council (KCC) and other stakeholders to review and finalize Urban Agriculture Ordinances which were assented to by His Worship the Mayor of Kampala City in May, 2005.

However, popularization and implementation of Urban Agriculture Ordinances is yet to be embarked on, if we secure funding for it.

Further more, sustainable structures created during project implementation of Community Based Groups (CBOs) and Community owner resource persons like the Community Agricultural Advisors(CAAs) can play a critical role of quick dissemination and popularization of Urban Agriculture Ordinances in a more participatory and cost-effective way.

5.	Key messages about Urban Agriculture.

Urban agriculture is a key livelihood strategy for the urban farming communities for food security and nutrition; and the entire urban and peri-urban population for daily food needs and supplementary incomes.

Urban agriculture contributes to urban poverty reduction through implementation of sustainable agro-enterprises and building sustainable community structures.

Urban agriculture products have high market potential because of heir freshness, proximity to markets and relatively good prices and creating of employment opportunities.

Urban farming households make savings by growing and consuming urban agriculture products themselves like fruits, vegetables, milk, poultry

Urban agriculture can be organized by zoning the activities. Urban Agriculture Ordinances provide for guiding, controlling, regulating and legalizing urban agriculture activities in the city to ensure more orderly, organized, highly productive, more profitable and environmentally friendly Ordinances clearly specify permitted agricultural activities in designated zones of the city i.e.(the Core/the center; transition is in between core and peri-urban; and the peri-urban-in the outskirts of the city).

Urban agriculture can significantly reduce urban waste. Biodegradable waste can be converted into a valuable resource through the processes of reuse and recycling in form of compost and livestock feeds.

Urban agriculture creates green urban environments. Authentic values/beautification of the city and general environment sustainability aspects like sustainable use of wet lands, a healthy environment, fresh air, and minimizes de-silting of roads.

Back To Top