Betty* was born in a very poor family which could afford only one meal a day. She was raised in a situation where only today counts and tomorrow belongs to someone else. Due to the poverty among her parents, she was forced to get married to a relatively rich man in the village at a young age. Unfortunately the man whom she thought was rich lied to her and the real status of the man was a poor drunkard witch doctor who robbed people to get money.
Betty was desperately frustrated and disappointed to the extent that she wanted to leave the man’s home to go back to her parents but, at the same time, she was scared of what the witch doctor could do to her. Time passed and she had her first son in a very hard situation without help from the husband. She wanted to leave but the man could do all sorts of witchcraft to have her stay at his home. In this situation she had seven children.
Leaving her husband
After having the seventh born, her father died and she returned home for his burial. When at her father’s house she was determined to never return to her husband’s house again. She decided to stay at her deceased father’s place with her children and her mother. Her husband came to claim for her but she refused to go back.
Life was full of challenges with two women and seven young children in the house. Neither of the women had a stable income, and so one of her children decided to move back to his father’s home. In the process of travelling back to his dad’s, the boy ended up on the streets of Jinja.
A child on the streets
During our street walks, we came to meet the boy and through our counselling sessions, he opened up to us and told us about his home. One day came and he decided to take us home to meet his mother and grandmother. They were very happy to see him. After some time of settling home he was enrolled into our Education Sponsorship programme and this brought a lot of joy to all of his family to see the boy doing so well.
S.A.L.V.E. assessed his mother, Betty, to be empowered with a business so that she could help to pay for her son’s school fees. Betty ran her business so well, with all her determination knowing that it was the only means to her living a better life with her children and her mother.
Advanced Business Training
Following Betty’s success, she was enrolled into S.A.L.V.E.’s Advanced Business Empowerment programme, where caregivers who were already running their businesses successfully were given a boost to enable them to live an independent life from S.A.L.V.E..
Betty was given more training in business skills and a small investment was given to her to strengthen her new business ideas. Betty is now talking about buying land to construct a family home and all her children are in school.
S.A.L.V.E. is now also reducing the education support we have been giving her son so that they can start living an independent life, and S.A.L.V.E. can give other children in a very needy status an opportunity to go back to school.
*names are changed
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