Reclaiming Her Life: How Faith Found Purpose Through Innovation

According to the Ministry of Health (MoH, Report, 2018), about 70% of the youths’ social behavior and financial status in Uganda has deteriorated greatly due to drug abuse and addiction. This is believed to be caused by the increased number of slum areas, school dropout, unemployment, influence from others, poverty, and lack of proper information among the youth.

Faith, a youth from Odek Sub- County, Omoro district was no exception from this plight. At a young age, Faith started using drugs after dropping out of school. This was after she joined a gang of youth groups in her community.

“I started using drugs like alcohol and tobacco at the age of 14years. I had become a nuisance in the village and had no direction in life. At 17year I got married and started staying with my husband. Even then, I continued using drugs and the addiction almost made me break-up with my husband.” Faith said.

In 2022 Save the Children through the Local Council 1 conducted a beneficiary selection to support adolescent and youth who face unique challenges and have no hope of returning to education. After 3 months training in Transferable Life Skills, ASRH, and Literacy and Numeracy to prepare them for vocational and entrepreneurship training with an aim to improve their wellbeing.

“During the period when my relationship with my husband was on the verge of breaking up due to drug abuse, I heard an announcement through the Local Council 1 about an opportunity for youth from Save the Children. I took this opportunity and after enrolling, we studied life skills, literacy and numeracy where we learnt a lot about communication skills, reading and writing, among other sessions for 3 months.  After 3 months of learning I chose to pursue skills in entrepreneurship majoring in vegetable farming, Poultry and piggery keeping at Homa Farm in Omoro district.” Faith said.

Upon graduation, the project supported the youth with start-up kits in their respective entrepreneurship skills acquired.

“After graduating, I came back with good skills in growing vegetable and keeping poultry and embarked on a journey to practice the skills I had acquired. Save the Children divided us into groups of farmers and provided us with a water pump for irrigation, vegetable seeds, pesticides and fertilizers to start farming.

With support from my husband, I planted 3 quarters of an acre of vegetables and made a profit of UGX 1,800,000/- (estimate of $ 500). I used part of the money to take my 12-year-old sister back to school.

Recently I have been farming maize and beans for home consumption while engaging in poultry farming.

Save the Children later engaged us in another innovation project of the Black Soldier Fly and Solar Dryer to help the youth who are engaging in poultry farming and vegetable planting.” Faith Said.

Black soldier and solar dryer innovation

Save the Children under two projects (POWER 4AY and Response Innovation Lab (RIL)) worked in collaboration to leverage on training provided to adolescent and youth groups in vocational skills, and entrepreneurship and business skills. This synergy was built in rolling out black soldier fly innovation to the adolescent and youth groups engaging in businesses of rearing poultry, but they did not have sufficient supply of feeds for them, and solar dryer technologies those growing vegetables like greens, cabbage, egg plants, soya etc. who are suffering the consequences of short shelf life.

“With the black soldier fly we are able produce black soldier larva to feed my poultry. This is used by all the group members who are rearing chicken. I have 50 birds, and I hope to expand to even more birds. As a group we also use the pupa of the black soldier fly as fertilizer for our gardens. Other youth from the community have developed an interest in innovation and have requested me to train them in the innovation.  The solar dryer helps us dry the larva of the black soldier fly to preserve. We also dry our vegetables to preserve and sell during off-season periods when the rain is off. The solar dyer also helps us dry chili that we grind and use as pesticides on our vegetables" - Faith added.

"Through the village saving group, and the money from our farm harvest, I have acquired 20 acres of land together with my husband and our target is to expand our farm dealing in poultry and fish rearing and vegetable farming on a larger scale” Faith shares hopefully.