What is OMUKISA?
OPPORTUNITY
Omukisa is a temporary shelter to guarantee basic rights and facilitate the social reintegration of minors who have lived on the streets. It is situated in Iganga, district of Uganda.
Omukisa means opportunity and it is the new project that Petits Detalls is working on together with the local partner PECA Women and Children's Foundation.
Lines of action
Feeding
In order to guarantee their physical development, all the minors in the center receive three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. The food is prepared in the center's kitchen and consists of a varied diet adapted to the medical needs of each minor.
Health
Omukisa also offers medical attention to the minors. In 2021, a first exhaustive review of all them was carried out to diagnose the more serious problems with the intention that in 2022 only emergency intervention and periodic visits by a nurse will be necessary.
Psychosocial development
Living on the street has an immense psychological impact on minors. All of them carry traumatic events and that is why Omukisa is going to implement activities for their psychosocial development.
Education
The program "Catch-up Education: recovering the right to education" has been designed to motivate minors to return to class and help them reacquire basic knowledge in subjects such as mathematics, language or science. In addition, this program prepares them to return to school in the future, if they wish so.
Family reunification
In Uganda, the law dictates that whenever possible, any entity that works with street children must include among its objectives that the children can be reunified with their families of origin. For this reason, PECA has designed a family reunification program to search for the families of the minors living in Omukisa and assess the possibility of this children returning to them.
Research and community awareness
Omukisa also wants to work with different key agents in the community to study the causes and consequences of the fact that hundreds of children are forced to live on the streets and to study what the situation of girls is, since in the streets most of them are boys. At the same time, community activities will be organized to minimize the stigma towards minors.
