Featured Members : New Release

Featured Member of the Month: Eagles Youth Development Group (EYDG)

Eagles Youth Development Group is a community-based organization in Uganda and an active member of the Network’s M&E and Research Thematic Working Group. The group works mainly to prevent HIV and AIDS among youth and assist them inmaintaining sustainable income.

In the first half of 2011, Eagles Youth Development Group partnered with Youth for Human Rights International to implement a projectto address the issues of violence against women and children in Wakiso district in Uganda. The 6-month project focused on promoting behavior change by increasing access to information, education and communication (IEC) materials, and addressing the issue of transactional sex, referred to as ‘something for something love’,  among 15-24 year old girls. 

EYDG highlights the followinglessons learned from this project:

  • Violence against women can be prevented when men as a group start taking responsibility for men’s violence against women.
  • Reducing violence against women should emphasize holding men who use violence accountable in all courts of law.
  • When community norms ignore or accept violence against women, it will continue. The silence surrounding violence against women must be broken. 
  • We all have a task and responsibility to work to prevent violence in our relationships, families and communities and to support women facing violence.
  • Partnership and networking with organizations and development partners that prevent gender based violence to promote accessibility to resources and avoid duplication of services is important.

Through this project, EYDG distributed more than 400 copies of IEC materials on violence against women and HIV in 11 communities and schools and conducted a radio program on violence against women.

Positive feedback has since been received from the schools that benefitted from the project. Children and teachers have requested that more materials be distributed within their schools. 3 of the schools that were not visited have also requested for the materials and these will be visited by EYDG in March 2012. 

In implementing this project EYDG faced some challenges. These are mentioned below.

  • Limited access to information on children and women rights.
  • A realization of discrimination of HIV positive children among the community.
  • A high level of unsafe sex among girl-child school drop-outs.
  • Low leadership involvement in addressing the issue of violence against women and children.
  • Low involvement of parents in children’s learning and limited funding for project activities.

Going forward, EYDG plans to increase awareness-raising activities to reduce the stigma of HIV-positive children in the community, promote involvement of parents in their children’s learning processes, and create meaningful partnerships with similar organizations through increased networking.

Eagles Youth Development Group can be contacted at the following address:

TwahahMusoke
Program Coordinator
P.O. Box 39 
Namulonge
Uganda
developyouth@gmail.com

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