ROCA Projects

OBJECTIVES

1) To establish one school where orphans will attend for their classes (Quran memorizations and other Islamic literature) and also learn skills for life.

2) To have an orphanage within the set school and for the school to also serve as a skill training centre for widows.

ISSUES

Children in The Gambia, most especially orphans are hard hit, due to lack of easy access to service by nature of their location and their status in terms of service provision, and the poorly equipped primary health care centres cannot adequately cater for the health needs of the people of the Gambia.

These are sub - standard facilities, insufficient to provide counselling services for pregnant women, people living with HIV/ AIDS, support for the traditional birth attendance, malaria prevention and treatment among others, can have a negative impacts on births attended in the homes where housing are generally poor, unhygienic and situation very problematic.

Orphans, widows and deprived children suffer in The Gambia. This impinges on their rights and security. Main aspects of women's lives are affected, and this calls for protection. The aspects are: the integrity of their social status, freedom from physical abuse (including practices that are injurious to their health) and freedom from economic exploitation.

In The Gambia, women's perceived inferior status constrains them from making a full and fair contribution to the development of their families and the community and bars them from achieving their potential.

Women, most especially widows, are constant victims of domestic violence. It is customarily accepted that a woman be disciplined or punished by her husband when displeasing him. This disciplinary measures often takes the form of blows to the head, face and abdomen, sometimes even during pregnancy, which poses great health hazards for women.

Some parents in the rural Gambia, if not all, lack the skills and knowledge related to the appropriate psycho - social care needs of their children, such as affection, attention, guidance, counselling and development concepts.

Since women are the ones who look after the children in The Gambia society, many children lack paternal care, supervision and support, which is an integral and important part of child's upbringing. Generally, much redress has not occurred to help eliminate these practices, because domestic disputes are regarded by the society as a private matter not warranting legal intervention. Also, the women themselves often withdraw their charges of battery from the civil courts, owing to embarrassment over being accused of making public knowledge of family matters and subjecting the fathers of their children to shame and criticism in community. Thus, they continue to suffer pain and humiliation, seeking to maintain the integrity of their families.

In a society where poverty, unemployment and the prestige of marriage are important determinant of status, economic wellbeing and happiness, fear of loss of the social and economic protection of conjugal home and husband is another reason why women prefer not to challenge the status quo.

However, separation or divorce could be initiated by either battered wives or their kinsmen, when perpetration of violence to women becomes intolerably excessive. Women in The Gambia, especially in the traditional rural communities, suffered from actions by their male folk, which are tantamount to economic exploitation. For example, compared to men, there is inequitable disbursement by women on family substance and welfare. According to the report State of The Gambia Children and Women from 1995, the vast majority of men (64% percent) earn money mainly once a year, after the sale of crops (ground-nuts or millet).

Consequently, the brunt of providing the large quota of supplementation of family income is borne by 86.4% percent of rural women whose work is done throughout the year, while the men relax after the harvest.

By contrast, in the rural areas where there are educated, professional women, there is little overt exploitation since they can decide how to utilize their earnings. Nevertheless, there are incidents of subtle exploitation in homes where husbands who indulge in drinking, concubines, contracting polygamous marriages and other activities detrimental to the nuclear family's welfare, compel working mothers to scrounge and use a large share of their earnings on household substance.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY

Members of ROCA in close collaboration with potential partners would like to explore the following strategies to realize their objectives:

ORPHANAGE

Rural Orphans Charitable Association (ROCA) has been engaged since its establishment in different activities concerning the welfare of orphans including their support and care, which has given them enough experience and know - how of dealing with them and their problems.

Members of ROCA know all the cornerstones of all the problems facing the orphans as a result of the different PRAS conducted by our field workers during special programmes designed for the caring and support of orphans. During those programmes, ROCA identified almost six hundred orphans within the country, 95% of which receive no support from anywhere at all.

This project is therefore intended to give specific attention to those orphans in need, by providing them with protection, care, shelter, education, food, medication and clothing among others. This is for them to enjoy the basic human rights as indicated in the human rights document and as was enshrined in the objective six of Al - Gathafi project for the African Youths, the African Children and the African Women. The project will provide a structure for the orphanage and all the necessary incentives for its operations and thereby give support for its three years programme of activities. This will open avenues of opportunities for those orphans within the orphanage to acquire gainful skills, which could minimize their dependency on others.

SKILLS FOR LIFE TRAINING FOR WIDOWS

Traditionally, after their husband's death, women are easily "inherited" by a male member of the late husband's family thereby shifting the family responsibility upon that man.

However, with the present economic conditions couples with the outbreak of HIV/AIDS, these widows are left behind with nothing and almost no hope of re - marrying. These situations therefore open then to lots of plights and other family problems including the care of the children (orphans). This joint project would like to support those types of widows with training for a life skill that they could depend on and help them contribute their quota in their communities and towards their family upkeep. As projected, each widow shall be given a microcredit to start trade using the skills she learned.

SUSTAINABILITY PLANS

The introduction of life skills within this project will give way to its sustainability hence skills learned shall never be forgotten and the fact that those trained shall each be given a microcredit to start trade using the skills she learned.

Another very good strategy is, during the three years of their training, whatever items created in training workshops shall be sold at very reasonable cost, covering its expenses and then the proceeds will be ploughed back into the project.

Members of ROCA shall continue to liaise with potential partners to substitute and maintain the centre and help others emulate it.

BUDGET OF THE RURAL ORPHANS CHARITABLE ASSOCIATION (ROCA) PROJECT

No	ITEMS		UNIT	UNIT COST	TOTAL	COMMULATIVE TOTALS
1	Civil work (construction)		1	D2,500,000.00	D2,500,000.00
2	Shelter (bed, mattress and nets)		250pcs	D1500.00	375,000.00
3	Feeding 500 people x 3yrs		365 days	D50.00	27,357,000.00
SUB - TOTAL FOR ORPHANAGE						D30,250,00.00
4	Education & widows skills centre
5	Training materials	3yrs		D500,000.00	D1,500,000.00
6	Start up capitals	500 people		D5,000.00	D7,500,000.00
GRAND TOTAL					D9,000,000.00	D39,250,000.00
TOTAL IN USD						$1,453,704