Rwenzori Center for Research and Advocacy Uganda
Rwenzori Center for Research and Advocacy Uganda
RCRA contributes to empowering target marginalized and hard to reach communities to take actions that prevent ill- health for both communicable and non-communicable diseases, demand for access to quality health services, and challenge all forms of discrimination and inequality in health service delivery systems within their communities. Specifically, RCRA:
• Builds capacities of vulnerable community groups (OVC, PLHIV, PWD households, youth, women), CSOs and organized community groups/community health workers in RCRA sites of operation to engage with public health service providers in the decentralized health system.
• Disseminates national standards and strategies on SRH, HIV, to communities, CSO and Local Governments in all RCRA operation sites for programming and advocacy.
• Monitors and documents health service provision in hard to reach areas, and shares findings with communities, and decentralized and other health service providers.
• Strengthens capacity of RCRA Staff and partners to mainstream health rights issues in development and social human service assistance programmes and implement health projects.
Through its tested integrated population, environment, and Development (PED) model, RCRA supports vulnerable communities in the Albertine region districts and host communities drowned in poverty to improve; food production and nutritional standards, incomes, and promote environmentally friendly production approaches. RCRA does this through:
RCRA facilitates an environment in which marginalized communities are enabled to transform conflicts within their own communities and promote human rights, consequently creating inclusive stability and development. RCRA does this by:
Participating, facilitating and promoting the implementation of policies, legislation instruments that promote peace and inclusion.
RCRA Uganda continuously assesses capacity needs of staff within the organization and target communities, Community-Based Organizations, Faith Based Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations, private sector, and local government structures and develops plans to address them jointly. RCRA Uganda together with target communities engages and dialogues with duty bearers on key rights issues affecting communities to influence policy changes.
RCRA Uganda undertakes a wide range of participatory research with substantial grassroots perspectives on conflict, health, gender, human rights, and engineers a pool of research methodologies and reference material for use by advocates, programmers, scholars, and politicians. RCRA supports quality and timely information generation that is then packaged into useable forms for policy dialogue and program monitoring.
At RCRA Uganda, Gender is one of the cross-cutting issues (along with right to health, environment, human rights), that RCRA mainstreams and makes integral part of programme planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and analysis. The process ensures that gender needs and responses are analysed and made part and parcel of the programme work in Uganda, and that the needs inform our advocacy initiatives at all levels. Women move long-distance to fetch water while men raping them.
Alongside gender mainstreaming, RCRA implements strategies for women empowerment such as:
• Addressing the cultural vulnerability of women and girls, for instance, In Rwenzori Region Uganda the program has supported Domestic rainwater harvesting as a way of reducing thehardship of women and children who are culturally responsible for fetching water.
• Building skills of women groups to take decisions in managing their groups and mobilizing resources to address gender needs. As a result, women have gained recognition in society, and reduced susceptibility to sexual abuse and dependance on long-distant shallow wells.