Woord en Daad, a Dutch Christian non-governmental organization has launched a five-year project that aims at skilling refugees and host communities in the country.
Named the Local Empowerment and Development for refugee and host communities (LEAD), the €7.4 million( approximately shs28billion) project that will run from April 2024 to March 2029 is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and to be implemented in refugee-settlements and the hosting communities of Kiryandongo, Palabek, Rhino Camp, Bidibidi, Nakivale, and Kyaka II.
The project is funded by a grant from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Speaking during the launch on Thursday at Fairway Hotel in Kampala, Julius Onen, the Country Representative for Woord en Daad said the project aims at empowering refugees and their host communities.
“The LEAD project aims to enhance the capacity of local partners, enable direct funding to implement education and skilling, economic empowerment, job opportunity initiatives, and to facilitate meaningful participation of refugees in local, national and international policy influencing,” Onen said.
He said at in line with the organization’s philosophy of local empowerment for sustainable development, the project will be implemented by 12 local and national partners that include refugee led organizations and women led or rights organizations in the 6 settlements and host communities.
“We believe that everybody has knowledge and skills that need to be harnessed in this global environment for sustainable development. We want to ensure refugees contribute to the development of the country through gaining skills so that when they decide to go back to their home areas, they have skills they can employ.”
He said the refugees and host communities will be gaining employable skills so that they are self-reliance while others with be equipped with advocacy skills to prioritise issues affecting refugees.
According to Dickson Biryomumaisho, the Executive Director for The Uganda National Apiculture Development Organisation (TUNADO) one of the local partners said they will be working in refugee hosting communities as well as refugees.
“In this case, in host and refugee communities, there is a lot of food insecurity as we shall use business approaches to solve this. We are going to give vocational training that will give employable skills and once people have them, we will train them in beekeeping so they can produce honey but we also arrange them into cooperatives to enable them aggregate their products for market access so they can earn and reduce depence levels on donation,” Biryomumaisho said.
He said the refugees and their host communities will be engaged to plant and cultivate big chunks of land while conserving trees where they will keep bees but also produce enough food.
Veronica Namwanje, the Executive Director of the Uganda Small Scale Industries Association (USSIA) said they will be targeting both individuals and groups of refugees and host communities for training in Isingiro and Kyegegwa.
“We are giving them employable skills to enable them do different items like leather products and textile. We will also be doing a labour scan to find out which kind of skills they need.” Namwanje said.
The Dutch Ambassador to Uganda, Frederieke Quispel hailed the project, noting that the Kingdom of Netherlands is committed to supporting Uganda.
Eng. Hillary Onek, Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees welcomed the project that he said will ensure self-reliance of refugees .
“The support and funding from donors for refugee programs has been going down throughout the years yet the number of refugees continues to swell. This project has come at a right time since it will help refugees to become self-reliant by getting skills that will ensure they can make their own money,” Eng.Onek said.
He said this will take pressure off government to care for the refugees in all aspects.
