Overview of our work

Since beginning operations the Trust has successfully undertaken a number of charitable and development projects in Uganda in the following areas:

Sustainable Farming
Social Objectives of Sustainable Farming
Shelter Projects
Rainwater Harvesting Technologies and System Project
HIV/AIDS Education
Equal Rights to Land - Access, Use and Control
College Vocational Training

Sustainable Farming

The overall aim of TAO's sustainable farming projects is to provide a worthwhile and sustainable model for food and income generation, targeted specifically at poor families who care for orphans and vulnerable children. As well as an improvement in the living standards of such families, (due to better quality food and increased income being available), there is also a development of new skills and self-reliance.

TAO has provided assisted families with good quality seeds and seedlings, breeding animals, (usually pigs or goats), and modern beehives, as well as training and encouragement. Fully trained extension workers offer training in all aspects of sustainable farming. The extension workers use their own farms as demonstration models of what can be successfully achieved. With good role models, training and carefully selected input subsidies, the assisted families can learn to farm sustainably.

One of the long term objectives of our farming projects is to ensure land is farmed in such a way that it maintains productivity over a number of years by avoiding exploitative and damaging farming practices, such as the short term use of agro-chemical inputs. By using such methods, crop yields have been seen to increase four-fold or more.

Typically, after just one year of participating in our training programmes, the assisted farmers will have made the following changes to their farms: improved soil fertility through regular recycling of organic matter, composting, mulching, tree planting, pest control and preservation of resources.

The supported farms are then developed gradually and have a wide diversity of crops, (such as sorghum, maize, millet, peas, coffee, groundnuts, sweet potatoes and pineapple), livestock, beekeeping and trees. Such diversity is healthy, both environmentally and economically. Once a sustainable farming project is operating fully, the initial investment is usually soon recouped by the farming families who are able to enjoy the future prospect of continuing regular income. Income from the sale of crops, livestock, honey and beeswax is then utilised for the specific needs of families supporting orphans and vulnerable children; such as, clothing, shelter, education, medicine, food, and transport.

TAO also supports and focuses on reforestation projects. Our aim is to assist the poorer members of communities to make changes in environment management systems by planting fruits and establishing multi-purpose tree plots to promote reforestation. Trees provide various ecological functions such as watershed protection, windbreaks, erosion control, climate amelioration and carbon sequestration. Furthermore, there are strong economic advantages to assisted farmers in planting trees.

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Social Objectives of Sustainable Farming

Sustainable farming projects also have considerable longer term social objectives. Our primary aim is to help our assisted families move towards a level of self-sufficiency and self-sustainability. However, there are also important benefits such as reducing the pressure on primary school leavers to migrate to urban slums in search of work. Also, since most heads of orphan families are grandmothers, aunts or teenage girls, the additional income helps girls to stay in school longer and avoid early marriage, with its attendant health risks.

Early marriage for girls has been traditional amongst most of Africa's ethnic groups. Economic difficulties, exacerbated by the AIDS epidemic, create pressure for girls to marry even earlier. Research in Africa has found that increasing female literacy by 10% lowers the infant mortality rate by the same per cent. It was also found that two maternal deaths and about 45 infant deaths would be prevented for every 1000 girls completing one additional year of schooling.

Good nutrition is important for disease resistance and can improve the quality of life of HIV/AIDS sufferers within assisted families. The onset of HIV/AIDS, secondary diseases and death, is more likely to be delayed in individuals with good nutritional status. (This is particularly important in Africa where HIV/AIDS medication and special nutritional supplements are neither widely available nor affordable.) Nutritional care and support can also help to prevent the development of nutritional deficiencies, loss of weight and lean body mass, and maintain the strength, comfort, level of functioning and self-image of members of assisted families.

Each of TAO's sustainable farming components has also been developed as separate projects:

Goat Farming

The keeping of goats allows our assisted families to benefit from meat, milk and high-grade skin for specialist leather products. Goat meat in particular can improve the nutritional standard and cash income of our assisted families. We encourage our assisted families to work with extension workers to promote the rearing of goats in their local areas and to improve the ways in which herds are managed and fed.

Goats play an important role in the cultural, social and economic parts of the small farmers’ society. They provide meat and there is a ready market locally and for export. In all parts of Africa, goat meat ranks second only to beef in quantity, but in terms of palatability and delicacy, it is preferred to beef - contrary to western tastes - and fetches a higher price. Goat meat is a favourite food on special occasions in Africa, such as the celebration of funeral rites, Christmas day, Easter day, wedding ceremonies, and Thanksgiving ceremonies and upon the birth of a new baby.

Goats can act as a very helpful form of cash security, since they can be easily sold to generate ready cash to meet urgent home demands, such as medicine, school fees and paraffin at any time of the year. They can thus act as a stopgap when other sources of more seasonal income, like that generated from crops, are not available.

As well as providing skins, goats eat surplus vegetation which would otherwise need to be treated with herbicides and by eating surplus agricultural by-products, (such as corn stalks and banana stems), turn them into a useable product. Farmers are able to maintain goats on marginal land unsuitable for other stock or for normal crop production. Goats also improve such marginal agricultural land by depositing nitrogenous manure.

Goats require low capital investment and are resistant to a number of diseases which affect cattle, including East Coast Fever (ECF). Their reproductive turnover is high, (since they reproduce every six months), and a small herd can be easily managed by family labour. In certain areas where TAO has established projects cattle rustling is commonplace. It is often safer to keep small ruminants like goats as they cannot be tracked for long distances by the rustlers as happens with cattle.

Beekeeping

TAO provides communities supporting orphans and vulnerable children with beehives and training in their management and also expertise in the processing of comb honey into beeswax and liquid honey. Because beekeeping does not use land, production of honey need not conflict with crop growing and can operate alongside other farming practices. By investing in beekeeping TAO aims to both protect the habitat and create a source of income for assisted families.

In all African societies honey is valued as a sweet and flavoursome food and in areas of food shortage, a useful source of carbohydrate adding nutritional diversity to poor diets. Honey often has an important place in traditional African food preparation and forms part of many traditional ceremonies. It is also widely used as a source of sugar for making honey wines and beers.

Beeswax also has many uses and is used throughout Africa for batik and in the process for casting small metal objects. It is also widely used in villages as a waterproofing agent, to strengthen materials, in leather and cotton strings, in candle manufacturing and in the preparing of ointment. Beeswax is an ideal commodity for rural communities to trade since it does not deteriorate with age, is easily storable, complex processing methods are not required and simple heating, filtering and storage methods can ensure that the beeswax is clean. Beeswax requires no special packing and is in fact normally exported as small unwrapped lumps inside hessian sacks. Like honey, it can be an appropriate crop for export to developing countries.

World honey production is near one million tonnes. However, this must be considered a fortunate by-product of the major value of honeybees as pollinators of over one hundred cultivated crops. Most flowering plants benefit from honeybee pollination because they have evolved in association with pollinating insects and these plants and insects are interdependent for survival. TAO therefore also supports beekeeping for environmental and conservationist reasons.

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Shelter Projects

TAO has successfully run programmes with the aim of building or re-habilitating shelters for orphans who are living on their own or with elderly grandmothers or aunts. Many African families of children, who have lost both parents through HIV/AIDS or internal conflict, continue to live in the family homestead left behind by their parents but now headed by the eldest child. In other cases an elderly relative, such as a grandmother, will take responsibility for such orphans and house and care for them in her own homestead.

Many family homes in Africa are constructed from mud and wattle, which the man of the household would traditionally have kept well maintained. Left for a long period without maintenance, such structures begin to deteriorate and eventually collapse. In some cases, where proper shelters do not exist, children are forced to live with their domestic animals, such as goats. In such circumstances, the proper disposal of human waste becomes difficult as the pit latrine structures commonly used can deteriorate and collapse. Such lack of sanitation facilities exposes the children and the elderly relatives who care for them to great health risks.

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Rainwater Harvesting Technologies and System Project

Water is life, yet safe and affordable water is denied to many poor African people – a situation which perpetuates poverty and ill-health. Because of insufficient water supply systems, women and children often have to travel up to six hours a day to collect water, which in many cases is polluted and carries fatal water-borne diseases. This constant need to travel for water also confines women and children to menial work in one location, limiting their chances and choices as they cannot engage in more economically gainful and socially rewarding activities. The aim of TAO's projects in this area have therefore been to ensure that poor communities can access sustainable, clean water by providing materials and training for them to construct rainwater harvesting tanks.

Rainwater harvesting involves the construction of low-cost ferro-cement tanks which are the cheapest and most suitable tanks for individual homes. All over Eastern and Central Africa there are two rainy seasons with well-dispersed rain. Every home or institution has a roof (whether tiled, concrete, or corrugated iron sheets) which can be used to catch rainwater.

By installing a water storage tank, outlet with tap, gutter, down pipe and sieve to remove debris, rainwater can be collected from rooftops, stored and effectively used. The installation of such technology can provide sufficient water for drinking and cooking for a typical family throughout the year. If built properly the system does not require any further outside maintenance.

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HIV/AIDS Education

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has had a deep effect on all levels of society and the detailed statistics are stark. It is estimated that approximately 27 million people are now living with HIV in Africa today and more than 15 million people have already died from AIDS in Africa. More than 11 million children have lost at least one parent to the epidemic. Only about 70,000 Africans, out of more than four million in need, have access to antiretroviral treatment. Only 1% of HIV-positive, pregnant African women receive treatment to prevent the spread of the virus to their unborn children.

TAO has been actively involved in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in Uganda by educating local people of the risks of the disease and how it can be spread. The aims of these projects have been:

to sensitise and educate communities about HIV/AIDS using adverts, publicity, media, radio and TV talk shows
to provide voluntary counselling for people requesting HIV/AIDS testing
to develop referral systems with other agencies providing treatment for opportunistic infection.

The education is implemented by staff and volunteers selected by their communities. Their roles include committee mobilisation, sensitisation, counselling and social support for people living with HIV/AIDS and their families. No affected sectors of the community are excluded from the programmes. During the sensitisation meetings and home visits they train communities using leaflets, charts, games, plays, and discussions on the following topics:

Facts about HIV/AIDS
Situation analysis (the AIDS scourge world wide)
Facts about ‘Sexually Transmitted Diseases’
Prevention of mother to child transmission
Voluntary counselling and testing
Facts about nutrition
Anti-Retroviral therapy
Adult teaching methodologies
Testimonies by people living with HIV/AIDS
Promotion of STD / HIV / AIDS health

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Equal Rights to Land – Access, Use and Control

TAO has supported sustainable farming projects in various Ugandan districts that have proved to be excellent long-term cash generating projects for poor rural farmers supporting orphans and vulnerable children. However, the question of land ownership has been a contentious one and in many cases widows and orphans are deprived of land rightfully theirs when it is appropriated, often by relatives of a deceased husband or father.

Although the regional government may have put measures in place to ensure the effective transfer of property, these are often not utilised due to discrimination and fear. In many cases widows and orphans are ignorant of their legal rights as relatives of a deceased person and this lack of family continuity can negatively affect the success of farming projects. Only a few African people leave wills or memory books detailing how their possessions should be distributed and most rely on verbal communication. In cases where children are left with control over property they tend to misuse it due to lack of guidance; for instance, they may sell the property cheaply in order to survive and some relatives may take advantage of this by encouraging a sale to themselves at a low price.

Women traditionally carry out farming tasks in which they have expertise. It has also been proved that when women have control of land, there is an improvement in food security and family welfare. As well as agricultural production, women can, if they have control over land, use it for other economic alternatives such as leasing it out or using it to access credit and improve their other income-generating ventures.

It has also been a challenge for widows and orphans to use the services of legal professionals and the few widows and orphans who have been empowered cannot afford the legal fees of a practising advocate. Land, housing and inheritance law with respect to women is an important issue affecting all sub-Saharan African countries – as highlighted in a recent report, published by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). Please see the 'Links' section of the 'Where we work in Africa' page for details of COHRE.

TAO has set up a paralegal programme to harness the active participation of widows and orphans in the implementation of land use policy so that their interests are catered for at household level. Legal education sessions are conducted for staff, volunteers and community leaders to enable them to handle land related cases affecting marginalized groups in the communities, (such as widows, orphans, and children). Training covers specifically land and property rights, inheritance and succession, custody of children, maintenance of children, the role of the local council, the role of police and probation officers, and the family and children’s court.

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College Vocational Training

There are fewer regions other than Africa in which the trade-off is drawn more sharply between the achievement of skills development with technical and vocational training and providing universal basic education. Both are important to economic growth and poverty reduction, but the fiscal and administrative capacity of African states to meet both goals is limited. The presence of HIV/AIDS and its de-skilling of the labour force compounds the problem further.

TAO has worked in partnership with the Uganda government to create, establish and run a vocational training centre at Migyera in Uganda which commenced operating in June 2002. The centre can provide skills training for up to 200 students and has been growing each year in its student population. Vocational training has an immediate effect for the person being trained – he or she acquires skills, which will make it easier to get employment or to create self-employment. The vocational centre offers two year training programmes specialising in essential skills from building, farming and carpentry to dress making.

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