Location: Udaipur, India Setting: Rural Established: 2006 Staff: 4

Subject Areas:
Youth and Education: Skill Building, Guidance and Counseling, Leadership Training
Community Development: Social Empowerment, Gender Equity, Violence Mitigation, Vocational Training

Organization Objectives

Alfa Educational Society was founded with the idea that youth activated by the discussion of social issues will be able to build an intellectual base and be a more valuable asset to society. It works with traditionally victimized communities such as Adivasis, Dalits, and the poor to offer tools and alternatives to empower them to change their own situations. Specifically, it aims to:

- Engage youth in activities that spark and challenge their thoughts on contemporary rural issues, encouraging them to question their basis and develop solutions to them
- Build capacity and provide trainings on several key issues, including gender roles, communalism, media, and government schemes
- Introduce rural girls and young women to new skills and create a forum for idea exchange

Location: Kiwangala (Masaka, Uganda) Setting: Rural Established: 2003 Staff: 3

Organization Overview:

Founded by an orphan himself, COTEFONE is a school, and community development organization that aims to provide a free and holistic education for orphans and other vulnerable children(OVCs) COTFONE provides over 500 orphan and OVC with a free traditional education that is supplemented by various other training including vocational skills, health, and hygiene. In addition to these activities COTFONE seeks to assist the guardians of these children, and provides them with a variety of services. This includes a Self Help Group project in which community members pool their financial resources in order to provided for emergency assistance and loans for income generating activities.

Subject Areas:

Youth and Education: education and vocational training for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs)

Health: HIV/AIDS education, malaria prevention, reproductive health education

Community Development: Income generating projects (IGAs), elderly support

Organization Objectives:
COTFONE aims to support underprivileged children and community members to live a better life and to achieve their full potential. The organization uses a holistic approach by targeting the children, their households and communities as parts of their activities. COTFONE’s specific objectives as an organization are to:

• Improve the quality of life of the poor orphans and marginalized members in Kiwangala through the provision of free basic formal education and vocational training with literacy skills
• Improve food security through the introduction of new techniques of farming and other income generating activities
• Provide health education and initiate health care services for general awareness among people about HIV/AIDS and related problems
• Recruit and train counselors and volunteers to take care of persons with HIV/AIDS as well as their children
• Establish Orphans Assistance Scheme, children, youths and older persons recreation center
• Support the elder persons and entire community members through guidance and counseling, income generation by offloading the weight of their grandchildren and providing social services to them

Step Up Infant and Primary School

Location:Masaka, Uganda Setting: Semi-Urban Established: 1999 Staff: 20

Organization Overview:

Founded in 1999, Step Up Infant and Primary School is dedicated to educating children in the local community as well as orphans and vulnerable children. Step Up currently has over 500 students enrolled with over 100 students boarding at the school and actively works to ensure that OVC are able to access this education by fundraising to pay for school supplies and school fees. Step Up also provides basic vocational training for its students so that may acquire valuable and potentially profitable skills.

Subject Areas:

Youth and Education: Scholastic support for orphans and vulnerable children(OVC), extracurricular activities, vocational education
Organization Objectives:
• Providing Pre and Primary education to children in the locality including orphans and vulnerable children.
• Teach children according to their ability.
• Provide basic vocational training

Child Restoration Outreach (CRO) Uganda

Location:Masaka, Uganda Setting: Urban Established: 2002 Staff: 10

Organization Overview:

Founded in 1992, Child Restoration Outreach (CRO) has been working to support street children and their families in over four districts throughout Uganda. CRO’s Masaka branch has been in operation since 2002 and has been working to alleviate the daily struggles of street children in and around Masaka town. CRO’s approach focuses on building the capacity of street children so that they can effectively combat and ameliorate the myriad of hardships they face on a daily basis: these include drug addiction, disease, hunger, child labor, sexual exploitation, as well as physical and emotional abuse. While equipping the street children with these tools is effective, CRO recognizes that the only sustainable solution to the problems faced by street children is to reintegrate them with their families. To this ends, CRO provides a variety of trainings, workshops, and resources to the families of street children to assist in the reintegration process as well as to ensure a hospitable environment for the physical, mental, and spiritual development of the children.

Subject Areas:

Youth and Education: Provision of formal & informal education to Street Children
Human Rights: Health Education, Childhood immunizations Advocacy, and basic health care

Community Development: Family Economic Empowerment, Community and Parents’ Sensitization Programs


Organization Objectives:
Child Restoration Outreach (CRO) Masaka is committed to rebuilding the lives of street children - their families and communities. These are their activities:

• Provide Psychosocial care and support to Street Children
• Enroll former street children in formal and informal education programs
• Provide medical services as needed to Street Children
• Conduct routine home visits to families of street children
• Provide adult literacy to the parent and caregivers of street children
• Establish women and men’s clubs within communities
• Develop Self-help Groups in communities with high numbers of street children
• Provide Family Planning and immunization services to targeted communities

Nazareth Children's Home

Location:Masaka, Uganda Setting: Rural Established: 1975 Staff: 2

Organization Overview:

Nazareth Children’s Home is a orphanage for children between the age of 2 and 18 whom have been abandoned by their family. Founded by Ms Josaphine Namakula, an orphan herself, in 1975 Nazareth Children’s Home has provided a safe home environment, schooling, and vocational training for countless abandoned children over the years. Many of these children go on to graduate from prestigious universities and many have come back to Nazareth to contribute to the operation and sustainability of the home.

Subject Areas:

Youth and Education: Formal education, vocational training, child care and housing
Environment and Agriculture organic garden, animal husbandry, appropriate cooking technology

Organization Objectives:
Nazareth is committed to helping the orphans in and around Masaka town by providing them with support in the following areas.

• A safe and comfortable home environment
• Access to good schools
• Training in vocational skills
• Adequate nutrition and health care