Healing Focus Orphanage

Healing Focus Orphanage Centre is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) whose mission is to empower children especially young women in Uganda to reach their full potential.

Healing Focus Orphanage Centre actively challenges cultures and attitudes which prevent the Girl Child from receiving a full education. In the Busoga community the challenges are most commonly early marriage, child prostitution in various forms, unwanted early pregnancy, and scarce access to sanitary protection during menstruation.

We are working to sensitize the community to the dangers of perceiving the Girl Child as an inferior being. A child who feels like a second-class citizen’s more vulnerable to abuse. Our aim is to continue the work we’ve already started with the girls at the Healing Children Primary schools where we are raising awareness of their reproductive rights and full time education.

Our approaches are creating a real change to the social attitudes and structures which endanger the Girl Child’s reproductive health and social independence.

Since 2010 Healing Focus Orphanage Centre has reached out to the girls in Busiiro community. Our aim is to empower them with life skills that will help them reach their full potential. In collaboration with the local community system, we provide workshops and forums in which girls can safely discuss their experiences – especially those that stand in the way of their education, their development and their prospects. Through carefully structured environments like Girl Clubs the girls can openly express themselves, support each other, actively engage with their communities, and share their concerns and challenges.

Wherever possible we look into local solutions which can eventually become self-sustaining as well as contribute to the health of the local economy.

As well, Healing Focus Orphanage Centre engages with the wider community. Meetings have been arranged with parents, local leaders, and the police. The aim, with some success, is to alert everybody to the rights of girl children – especially the rights to education, protection, and choices. In this way the whole community is becoming involved with the education and protection of their young girls.

We are researching solutions to some of the most urgent problems. For example, the lack of safe sanitary protection during menstruation. We feel that solving this problem might also help to alleviate the poverty endemic in the area.