Poverty Alleviation
Poverty is one of the biggest problems (besides ignorance, hunger and disease) affecting people's livelihoods in Uganda. According to the 2002 report of the Ugandan Participatory Poverty Assessment Programme, more than 40% of the population lives under extreme poverty conditions. Most people have very low and unpredictable incomes due to a lack of secure gainful employment, good markets and economic opportunities, exacerbated by the low levels of education, lack vocational and entrepreneurial skills and lack of capital (credit or savings) and productive assets to start income-generating activities.
SLINT-Uganda is committed to assisting and empowering people to break though the poverty entrapment and move towards realizing sustainable livelihoods. It catalyses and supports direct intervention measures that would help to enhance people's incomes and asset base, especially for women, youth and vulnerable communities. These include: assisting people to acquire and apply relevant knowledge, skills and information in order to widen their economic opportunities and create jobs. SLINT-Uganda focuses on the following specific strategic actions:
| Micro-enterprise Development: Catalyzing income-generating activities and small businesses. | Encouraging and supporting people (individuals, cooperative societies or youth and women groups) to engage in income-generating activities (e.g. poultry and livestock farming, beekeeping, fish farming, fruit-growing, handcraft production, etc) or establis/expand their small businesses/micro-enterprises (e.g. retail shops, capentry and artisan workshops, baking and confectionery, agro-processing plants such as maizemills, etc) in order to boost their incomes and financial security. |
| Business Skills Development: Fostering entrepreneurial and business skills | Developing people's entrepreneurial and business management skills through targeted training workshops, advisory and mentorship services and maintenance of business information centres and assisting them to devise ways and means of applying the acquired knowledge and skills to translate into increased incomes. |
| Micro-finance: Facilitating access to micro-finance (credit and savings) | Advising and assisting poor people to access and effectively utilise available micro-credit and financial services and/or enhance local savings for investment in new viable, or expansion of existing, income-generating activities. |
| Market Development-Diversification: Supporting market research and access to diverse markets | Assisting poor people to gain access to bigger and competitive markets (both local and export markets) for their products, including agricultural produce, handcrafts, and other products through supporting: market research and information access services, technical advice on economic diversification opportunities, and assisting, where possible, in linking local producers with external businesses/ markets. |
| Assisting people to overcome socio-economic barriers and respective disadvantages. | Assisting vulnerable and disadvantaged groups (including HIV-AIDS affected people, the disabled, elderly people, delinquent youths or war victims) to overcome barriers that undermine their ability to earning a descent living, find gainful employment or lower their economic productive capacity. |
