20 children from Uganda Railways Primary School in Loco community have volunteered to be part of a Child Rights Club, to learn about their rights (as laid out in the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child), how to promote them and how to advocate for both themselves and the other children in their area.

“They will be the eyes, ears and mouths of the voiceless children in their school and community” said COTE Africa social worker Nandawula Babra.

The Headteacher from the Primary School helped to form the group and also appointed a ‘patron’ from the teaching staff to guide and support them as they train and plan their activities.

The group, (consisting of 14 girls and 6 boys) had their first workshop last month, which was facilitated by Noah Namwano from Child Restoration Outreach in Jinja. The session covered a broad understanding of what a child rights are, what the Convention for the Rights of the Child is and what kind of activities the club will be involved with.

The children will be choosing these activities based on the four themes of survival, development, protection and participation. Through these activities they will be contributing to the reduction of violence, abuse, exploitation and trafficking in the community.

The day after this workshop, another Child Rights Club session was held, together with teachers, to focus on child protection. The children were invited to discuss the issue of corporal punishment at school, giving examples of their experiences, feelings and opinions on how discipline could be improved.

The teachers were very responsive to these ideas, and the session went on to discuss child exploitation. Children were asked to identify perpetrators and came up with a full list of those they feel pose a danger. Facilitator Noah Namwano said “I am so pleased with the participation from the children. It just shows they have something to say, and they are just looking for the opportunity to express their concerns”.

They went on to look at different forms of exploitation and what can be done to stop it. Many of the children were surprised, as some realised through this discussion that are regularly subjected to exploitative activities in the areas. The Child Rights Club will be meeting again in the next few weeks to look at leadership and planning.

​Watch this space to see their progress and find out more about our work in Uganda!

This time last year, we'd just returned from our first ever playscheme in Loco slum, Uganda. We began working with this community in January 2016 and last years' playscheme was a way for us to introduce ourselves to the local community. We organised a week of activities with the COTE Africa team for local children, and we returned in May 2017 to do the same again.

Our staff and volunteers have just returned from this years' playscheme and were blown away by the transformation from last year. Sarah Collinson who ran the playscheme with the help of three The Body Shop at Home volunteers, said:

​"This year's playscheme showed us how much progress is happening week by week in Loco. The work of our Child Protection Teams, the new Early Childhood Development Centre offering education to the most vulnerable young children, and the work of all the COTE Africa staff has made such a huge difference compared to just a year ago. This was particularly clear in how quickly the children adapted to games and lessons; treated each other with kindness; and showed vital awareness about keeping safe and clean. This is a testament to all the training and support that is going on behind the scenes for the past year".

In January 2016, the people in Loco said they had no hope. Unemployment and income poverty had left households vulnerable and their children were prone to exploitation, malnutrition, physical and sexual abuse. The Chairman of our Child Protection Team (CPT) in Loco, said “People here have had many organisations come and start things and then go, promise things and then disappoint, they didn’t believe things could change”.

But ten local people were trained up to work in their area as part of the CPT, to educate people about child protection and support them to create a protective environment. A year on we have the full participation of local people, not only the CPT volunteers but also parents getting involved with education, mothers creating new businesses to pay for their children to go to school and local services engaging with the Loco community to create a better environment for children. We also built a brand new Early Childhood Development Centre (ECD) to offer early years education for some of the most vulnerable children in the community.

​The Chairman of the CPT now describes how “People see workshops, they see a team that deals with their problems, they see a drop in domestic violence and crime, they see their children on a playscheme and a new Early Childhood Development Centre being built, and it gives them hope. These things have never happened in Loco. Hope is knowing things can change”.

The transformation in the community was obvious at this year's playscheme. For example, the children were much better behaved than last year, where we saw a lot of competition for toys and activities between the children. But this year, the older children were looking out for the younger children on the playscheme, ensuring they were safe and able to take part in the activities fairly.

Last year, serious health problems emerged in the community during the playscheme, and our team adapted the activities to include a full day’s training on health and hygiene with songs about hand washing and puppet shows on keeping clean and safe from illness. This year, it was clear that health and hygiene are now fully engrained with the children who understand why this is so important. The children are now quick to wash their hands before eating their daily porridge; running to the queue at the tap to wash meticulously with soap whilst singing "this is the way we wash our hands" song.

Other aspects of sanitation had also vastly improved this year. All the children understood the importance of using the bathroom facilities and made sure they washed their hands after going to the toilet. This is something that ECD Centre staff take very seriously, checking the children as they leave the toilet and sending them back to wash their hands if they aren't wet! 

Sarah said: "The COTE Africa Team are running another playscheme in December, and I know they are going to see more signs of transformation with the children. Things change so quickly when the community work together and as other aspects of our work, like the education loans, get more and more established, everyone is looking forward to see the difference made in Loco".

Read more about our work in Uganda
Read more about this years' playscheme

Children on the Edge generate hope, life, colour and fun in the lives of some of the most vulnerable children across the world. Hope is a fundamental part of this because it enables people to know that things can be different. In turn, this is a catalyst for action within the communities where we work.

Living on the edges of society, surviving life in refugee camps and slums, enduring persecution or isolation are all situations that can breed despair and inertia. Sometimes when people see no evidence that things can change, they stop wasting energy believing their situation can be different. Rebecca Solnit describes hope as an axe, rather than a lottery ticket, and says  ‘To hope is to give yourself a future, and that commitment to the future makes the present uninhabitable’. 

In his 1930s ‘Treatise on Hope’, Ernst Bloch says that hope requires people to ‘throw themselves actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong’. To us, this speaks very strongly of the importance of hope in sparking community ownership, participation and action. Hope gets people on their feet and inspires them to become actively involved in creating change, instead of resigning themselves to the difficult circumstances they are living through.
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​We have seen this scenario many times in the situations we work, and it’s why generating hope is one of the core elements we focus on. We encourage it through our relational approach, and it is the key to community ownership in our projects. Here are two examples:

These are just two examples of how hope brings action in our work, but if you visited any one of our projects you would see the same values. Thank you for your support in generating hope and bringing change in the lives of children living on the edge. ​

Read our earlier blog: 'What do we mean when we talk about hope?'

Since the success of our pilot education loans in Masese II, the Child Protection Teams we support in Uganda have been introducing the scheme into three new areas; Loco, Masese I and Masese III.

Just £20 can provide a small business loan for a struggling household in Uganda. 

In each area, the most needy households are identified and invited to attend a series of training workshops. These include savings workshops, small business training sessions and opportunities to form self help groups.

The saving workshops have been newly introduced as the new area’s needs are so great. The workshops introduce the benefits of saving and give hints and tips on how to put money aside, even through times of financial stress. Each person attending has a trial period of demonstrating they can save money and budget, before they are given their first loan.

Small business training workshops give prospective owners the chance to learn about the principles of a successful business and how to use their new income in the best way in order to grown their trade further.

The self help groups are facilitated to allow people to work together, support each other and develop funds to help in difficult times. They all contribute to a health fund which protects members in times of sickness, and also a social fund which supports members in other potential troubles (like the loss of a relative). Over time, members re-pay the money lent to them so the fund is available for the next person.

The new communities have 20 loans currently running in each area. Each loan is worth about £20, has sparked a new business and changed the lives of each household.  Many and various businesses are blossoming throughout each community including mat making, silver fish selling, cooking, charcoal selling, fruit and vegetable stalls and hut renovation.

Babra is our social worker at Children on the Edge Africa, she says “These loans can give people a new start. One lady had been trapped in prostitution for a long time. I talked with her regularly for over a year about how the loan scheme could help her start an new life, but she was reluctant. She didn’t believe she could do it, but she was so unhappy. This year she started out on the scheme. Already she has a successful business selling ground nuts and plastering people’s homes! She is free and is now able to send her three children to school. When she sees me, she throws her arms around me with happiness.”

This number of loans given in Masese III will double soon as many of the Karamajong people that live here have a natural talent for business and are responding particularly well to the scheme. This is especially good news here, as the community had become reliant on a charitable organisation that gave food handouts, when the charity left, people here had no income or means of feeding their children. The education loans are now giving them sustainable means to earn, feed their children and send them to school. Masese II is still running the education loan scheme and currently have 46 households starting up businesses.

​It costs just £20 to provide a small business loan for a struggling household. The slideshow below shows some of the different businesses these loans have made possible. If you would like to donate £20 to start a new business and enable children to go to school, just click the button below. ​

Each year on the 8th of March, International Women’s Day encourages us all to forge a more gender inclusive, better working world.

Children on the Edge works with local partners to restore the ingredients of a full childhood to some of the most vulnerable children worldwide. A big part of this is working towards equality in opportunities and an end to discrimination for the women and girls we work with.

The theme for the 2017 International Women's Day is #BeBoldForChange and we are privileged to be partnering with a number of truly inspirational women, who use boldness and strength to bring about change for women and girls in their communities.

​Nandawula Babra is a social worker at Children on the Edge Africa, in Jinja, Uganda. She grew up in the slums here, and has been a social worker for 15 years. She is now responsible for the development, support and facilitation of the Child Protection Teams that work across four slum areas surrounding the main town. 

Children on the Edge combat child labour through the development of community led child protection, the provision of quality education and, when the need arises we facilitate more targeted work.

An estimated 1.76 million 5 -17 year olds in Uganda are engaged in Child labour. In and around Jinja where we are have established four child protection programmes, findings indicate that most of these working children have attended some formal education, however there is evidence to suggest that still one in every five working children had no formal education.

These children have very few options and are prone to exploitation and poor conditions of work. Some are engaged in domestic duties, some children beg, wash cars, scavenge, work in the commercial sex industry or sell small  items on the streets. Other hazardous activities include construction (particularly brick baking), sand, picking scrap and working at the lake shores.

During initial consultation with the Child Protection Teams, community members highlighted how children were often neglected and found loitering or searching for charcoal to sell. They are often sent by parents, which is why some awareness work on child exploitation was so important.

In response to this we have conducted a series of workshops in three communities outside Jinja. The objective of the workshops was to create awareness about child exploitation and its effect on a child’s development process, also to sensitize community members about various laws regarding child labour and exploitation.

During the training, participants were encouraged to identify forms of child exploitation in their own area, as well as those who perpetrate it. Each area came up with over 20 different occupations that children were burdened with, along with many scenarios they have witnessed where child labour has caused serious and lasting harm to the children in their communities.

One of our teachers talked about the importance of early childhood development and how if a child’s environment limits opportunities for learning children will be unable to realise their potential. Registration for the Early Childhood Development programme was also going on during the workshop, so not only were carers receiving training about the issues, but they were able to take practical action to protect their children at the same time.

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Read about the work we do in Uganda building a protective environment for children.
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