A breakfast center has been established to provide the children at the center with at least one nutritious meal a day. The center currently serves 216 children aged between 6-12 years. The breakfast center was established to provide breakfast to primary school-going children who cannot afford to pay money charged for feeding at their schools (both government and private).

Due to the substantial effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic many families are too poor to afford meals and as such some children even go to school on empty stomachs. Therefore LICHI came in to help the orphans from those families which are heavily affected.

The response to the Breakfast Center has been unbelievably demanding. But unfortunately due to lack of funding and resources, LICHI is not able to cater for all the applicants and it has created a large list of pending applicants. Our goal and wish would be to provide breakfast to as at least 1000 children per day.

LICHI is building the resources of children, care givers and the community in order to build resilience and develop better their copying mechanisms. According to the baseline survey carried out by LICHI, 80% of the children on the streets are as a result of poor relations between children and care givers. Unless this is tackled through psychosocial support the number of street children will increase.

In Uganda through universal primary education the enrolment of primary school-going children was so high at the start; but after a few years the number of drop-outs increased. According to our survey, 65% of the drop-outs was due to psychological traumas and abuse by the teachers and care givers. As a result we realized the need to provide psychosocial support in addition to the material things.

Psychosocial support is provided to the children, teachers, care givers and the community through counseling and training.

The youth are a very vulnerable group that LICHI is actively involved in assisting. They have been affected by the illness and eventual loss of the parents. LICHI empowers them with income generating activities and vocational skills in the area of carpentry, electronic ware repairs and hair dressing salons among others. This intervention helps them to respond to the needs of the siblings under their care.

Some of the youth are currently engaged in these activities. They are also involved in club activities that promote sharing of experiences. This is used as an avenue for reproductive health information dissemination and community sensitization.

We have a drama group which does the outreach to schools and communities to perform different plays, songs and preaching the gospel. Entertainment has proved to be the best method of passing information to communities especially the youth because they enjoy the entertainment in while getting the information.

They also preach the gospel to children through sports; "sports has the power to unite people in a way little else can. It breaks down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all kinds of discrimination. Sport speaks to people in a language they can understand" said Nelson Mandela.

Infotainment and sports have proved to be the most liked and highly attended gatherings whether old or young people, which is the best avenue before or after, to preach the gospel and talk about BCC-Behavioral change and communication plus other HIV/AIDS messages like abstinence which is a sure way for children to avoid HIV/AIDS.

Giving these youth something meaningful and productive to do reduces idling and redundancy which have their repercussions (trouble). We believe these activities expand their intellectual capacities and indoctrinates a culture of social activism. With youth unemployment being so high, it also gives them a purpose in their lives and allows communities to expand their capacities by training local talents.

Women constitute about 95% of the primary care takers of the vulnerable children enrolled at LICHI. They have very low income and mainly of low literacy levels. LICHI's intervention has been to educate and empower them to effectively respond to the needs of their families. This has been possible through skill training in income generating activities.

Women have been constituted into groups and are now actively engaged in poultry farming, hairdressing, tailoring, food sales and soon a few shall be involved in initiating dairy farming. Under the women program, home visitation to offer psychosocial counseling to the affected families is regularly carried out by social workers who are trained counselors.

We believe that the involvement of women in these projects will prevent them from engaging in prostitution as a means of survival. This in turn prevents the rapid spread of the virus. There is no doubt that HIV aggravates poverty leading to malnutrition and rapid progression to AIDS.

The future of the vulnerable children can only be assured through access to basic education and health. LICHI is addressing these through provision of tuition/fees and scholastic materials (pens, exercise books, math sets, school uniforms) to children mainly in primary schools.

Because LICHI does not operate a hospital or medical clinic, we refer the sick children to a LICHI-approved clinic where the organizations pays for the medical services at a later date. In a bid to improve the sleeping conditions, bed nets and blankets are provided to the children.

Although the government through the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme has enabled many children, government schools are not in every area therefore some of the children are forced to attend private schools which charge tuition/fees and other school dues. LICHI is expected to help some of these children who cannot afford.

We have worked with the leadership of different schools to establish health clubs in the schools to see the following: how extra co-curricular activities i.e. games and sports are revived in schools.

• A counseling centre to be established to address so many issues among them HIV/AIDS
• And to see to it how the relationship of teachers and children can improve
• Promotion of child to child approach, to see how based children can be involved in their affairs i.e. in the said club to promote discussion, debates, dialogue and group sharing.
  
  

• Designing tailored psychosocial training programs
• Developing relevant psychosocial support training materials
• Deliver and manage a cross section of training courses targeting service providers
• working directly with children
• Conduct research activities on violation of children’s rights
• Vocational skills training to orphans and vulnerable children as well as the care givers.

LICHI HOPE SACCO

Lichi-Hope Savings and Credit Cooperative Society Ltd. Through this program, micro - loans are accessed by all care givers of the registered orphans, child headed families and other vulnerable groups in the area of operation i.e. women and youth who are members of this society especially those affected/infected by HIV/AIDS. The program is aimed at improving incomes of these families.