“A place of discovering our potential.” This is how one of the vocational students at Set Her Free Uganda described the supportive environment training centre. Set Her Free is one of SIA grant partners and we visited their site last week in Kampala.
MC at the Set Her Free Fashion Show with students modeling their tailoring class projects!
Robinah, a social worker and the director of Set Her Free, helps children and teens who have experienced extreme sexual violence or who have been working at brothels to find a new life. “We give them the love they have been denied, and the chance to live as a child again,” Robinah told us.
Set Her Free has a boarding room for some of the younger children, including some very young children who have been abandoned by their parents. For the older girls – in cohorts of 60 girls – they provide six months vocational training in tailoring or poultry farming.
Visiting the Chickens
Robinah at the poultry house
A SIA Grant last year helped kick-off the poultry project. We were very impressed with the newly-constructed large and clean Set Her Free poultry house. To start the project they purchased 542 chicks from a reputable breeder. After a few months they have only lost 20 chickens to illness. That’s a great success rate!
For the first month, the chicks need around-the-clock monitoring. Clay pots filled with charcoal keep the chicks warm at night. Ground coffee shells on the floor of the poultry house keeps down the smell and helps the chickens stay healthy.
Roosters in their side of the poultry house
So far, they have sold 40 chickens to neighbors and they are negotiating a contract with a local hotel who wants to buy some of their roosters. Set Her Free is using the eggs from the project for the vocational students’ meals and the sale of chicks and chickens will sustain and expand the project. The girls are learning about how to care for chicks, as well as about the business of selling eggs. This will give the girls a solid means of earning income – one that is safe, empowering, and helping them live to their full potential.