EmpowerU Cash+ has been a game changer in Lamwo’s Agoro Hills
“Without that support from UNICEF, I wouldn’t have been able to capitalize my business so that I can look after the baby..."
It is late October; the intensity of the rain season is well exhibited by the lush green everywhere you turn. It has been a sunny morning but all of a sudden, the morning sunshine is gone. The blue sky is being quickly covered by the nimbus clouds, which seem to be in a hurry to take their positions. Some are crashing the tops of Agoro Hills in Lamwo District, not far from the border of South Sudan.
The hills are well vegetated and beautifully rugged at the same time. Nature in its most natural form lives here. There is one wish though, may it not rain this day, the road needs a grader soon. Anyway, soon we arrive in a community with several huts forming a large homestead that dots the foothills of Agoro. In front of one of the huts, there are three saucepans piled on each other with the hottest fire beneath them. Something is distilling.
It is Polucire West village and the home of Winnie Labol, the 37-year-old mother of seven including a one and half month-old boy. When Labol experienced labour pains, she rushed to the health centre down the hill to give birth. James Ogonya would become her seventh child.
But Ogonya was born with some breathing difficulties and a deformity in both his legs prompting her to seek medical services beyond what could be provided in the serenity of Agoro Hills. She was referred to St Mary’s Hospital Lacor in Gulu, nearly 200km away.
In Gulu, her baby son was diagnosed with club foot among other ailments. She would stay in hospital for three weeks before the baby was discharged with a requirement for a weekly visit for manipulation and casting of the child’s legs to rectify the cow foot problem.
Luckily, Labol had been enrolled into the EmpowerU Cash+ programme where two of her children were beneficiaries. The programme is a partnership between UNICEF and the Development Response to Displacements Impact Project (DRDIP) of the Office of the Prime Minister with funding from the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
It is devised to empower select families with cash transfers for six months to complement protection, health, education and nutrition services. Savings and skills training was an integral part of the package and was provided by DRDIP not only to beneficiaries but also non-beneficiaries.
The overall goals of the programme were to provide humanitarian cash transfers to children in addressing malnutrition and food insecurity; develop skillsets and referral pathways to sustainable income generating activities, and foster a savings culture that would cushion communities from acute shocks.
The programme targeted a maximum of four children per household with a transfer of Shs45,000 per a month per a child, totaling to Shs180,000 for each beneficiary household per a month. Money was dispatched every two months making it three payment cycles. The programme was implemented in Lamwo, a district with a high influx of refugees mainly from South Sudan.
With the money Labol was getting for her two children, she decided to use it for the treatment of her baby. A return trip to Lacor costs Shs50,000 in transport alone and Shs25,000 for the manipulation and casting. This is money she must have every week.
Being in a peri-urban community, Labol used the money to buy some goats, chicken and improve her distilling business hence the fireplace in her compound.
“Without that support from UNICEF, I wouldn’t have been able to capitalize my business so that I can look after the baby. Shs75,000 on transport and hospital bills every week was before beyond my means and I don’t think we would be able to cater for the baby,”
Labol insists that the programme has helped many people with different challenges such as Jane Aciro of Panyule village in Agoro Hills. Aciro who is widowed with six children used to run a grain mill but whatever money she made; it was spent on looking after the children. When the machine broke down, she found herself unable to repair it.
When she was enrolled in the programme, she used the money to revive her grain milling business. “I have three children on the programe, when I received the money from UNICEF, I decided to spend Shs300,000 to repair the machine,” she reveals.
Charging approximately Shs200 per a kilogramme of either maize, millet or cassava, Aciro is able to make a gross income of Shs50,000 per a day of which Shs30,000 is spent on fuel. “I remain with Shs20,000 but through the programme, I have learnt that I can’t spend all of it. I have to save some to be able to service and repair the machine in case of breakdown,” she says. Poor maintenance was responsible for the collapse of her business before.
She used the rest of the money to grow sunflowers on two acres to supplement her income.
Whether having a child who requires expensive medical care or suffering the effects of a collapsed business, EmpowerU Cash+ has been a game changer for both host communities and refugees in Lamwo District.
