The Head of the Humanitarian Aid Unit at Ministry of Foreign Affairs Belgium, Laura Cogels visited the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) – Humanitarian Protection 1 (HP1) project implementing areas in South Western and North Western Uganda between 13th to 17th February 2023.
The Humanitarian Protection (HP1) project focuses on the protection of communities through multi-sectoral assistance, with special attention to the most vulnerable humanitarian crises. The beneficiaries for the HP1 project include the elderly, single mothers, child headed families, people living with disabilities and unaccompanied minors.
HP1 project has so far supported 8,337 Persons with Special Needs (PSNs) in Kyangwali and Imvepi refugee settlements.As part of the HP1 project, URCS offers multi-purpose cash transfers to meet the immediate needs of the people. During her visit, Cogels also participated in the distribution of non-conditional cash to refugees in Kyangwali refugee settlement.
The HP1 Project Manager – URCS, Paul Okot said, “The cash transferred to refugees is aimed at ensuring that households with Persons with Special Needs (PSNs) meet their immediate basic needs which will in the long run enhance house hold livelihoods thus building resilience to future shocks enhance self-sustenance.”
Okot added that results from URCS – Post Distribution Monitoring (PDM) indicate that by December 2022, approximately fifty eight percent of the beneficiary households who had received five out of the eight so planned cycles of cash assistance had already started to productively utilize the money and invested as start-up capital for micro – enterprises; including small scale kiosks, piggery and goats rearing.”
Bahat Wigingo a refugee from Democratic Republic of Congo with a house hold size of nine members said that he used the one million, eighty thousand shillings (1,080,000 UGX) cash received through HPI to start up a piggery farm. “Beyond this funding, my family can survive because I already sold one pig, which income supported me to buy maize which I will sell at double the price for a profit. I am also able to buy feeds for my pigs as well.”
