UGANDA

Mission start 1990
Impacted population 300,000

Access to drinking water 

Context

Uganda has a population of 46 million people, more than a third of whom live below the poverty line. It ranks 162 out of 189 on the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index.  Children are the first victims of the abject poverty, as their families are unable to ensure their health and well-being, especially in remote areas of the country.

The impurity of the water that households use leads to acute diarrheal diseases, which are often fatal. Every year, 1.5 million children die from diarrhea worldwide.

 

FXB in action

In the early 1990s, FXB’s founder, Albina du Boisrouvray, wanted to expand the organization’s activities in Africa, specifically in Uganda, which had many orphans due to AIDS, war and other causes. In 1991, FXB launched its first assistance programme for biological or extended families within the community to take in these orphans.

The goal was to provide them with the means to meet their basic needs so that they could raise, protect and provide a dignified future for these children. Each family received a seed capital in-kind to start an income-generating activity and support for the children’s nutrition and schooling. These were the first steps in our poverty reduction model: the ” Economic and Community Development FXBVillage ” programs. 

By combining access to food security, adequate health services and disease prevention, education for children, safe housing and appropriate sanitation facilities, and a regular source of income through microenterprise development, FXB has, through 37 Economic and Community Development FXBVillage programs, lifted 25,000 adults and children out of extreme poverty since 1991.  

In addition, in order to create a lasting impact and bring about behavioral change, FXB has organized numerous capacity building sessions for communities. Family planning, the importance of education, WASH, hygiene, health, prevention of HIV/AIDS and other diseases, violence against women, children’s rights, and environmental protection have all been addressed. 

Our ongoing programs

For several years, FXB has been working in partnership with The P&G Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation to provide hundreds of thousands of liters of drinking water to health centers, schools and vulnerable families in the Wakiso district. FXB also conducts activities with the overall objective of changing behaviors in WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) among communities, teachers, school principals and local authorities. 

Testimonial

Here is the underlying principle of the FXB Villages methodology: give rather than lend, and safeguard the protection of the fundamental rights of each family.

Kenneth, FXB Uganda Director

Mission impact

  • In 2014, an external evaluation conducted by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative in Uganda found that former beneficiaries of FXBVillage programs are multidimensionally less poor than their peers, even three years after the programme ended. The dimensions in which FXB former beneficiaries are better off are housing and land ownership, savings, access to child vaccination, food diversity and improved water sources.

 

  • In 2015, using baseline and end-of-project data from the FXBVillage programs monitoring and evaluation system, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University compared the status of beneficiary households before and after programmes implementation. The study includes data from 20 Economic and Community Development FXBVillage programmes operating between 2009 and 2012 in Rwanda and Uganda, representing more than 1,500 families.

The evaluation results conclude that FXBVillage programmes have led to significant improvements in economic security, health and nutritional status, water and sanitation, psychosocial well-being and school participation.

Read this study.