Youth Delinquency Programme

In Uganda, youth delinquency has become a threat to the communities and families; with major characteristics of theft, arson, drug trafficking, violence, addiction to commit crimes which altogether have constituted a threat to the general public and the environment. Youth delinquency has been linked to poor parenting practices at family and community level which is the main cause and then the lack of finances or poor economic conditions associated with unemployment and lack of opportunities for higher education.

To combat youth delinquency Good Hope Foundation focuses on three interventions which include;

Good Hope Foundation adopted a parenting model called parenting for respectability (PFR) which is all about building relationships. The model addresses 4 key areas of parenting which include; bonding and attachment, disciplining strategies, gender and socialization, and then spousal relationships. The program trains parents to learn skills and attitudes to bring up their children, bright, healthy and well behaved in a violence free environment. It also trains spouses to build better relationships and minimizes the use of violence against each other. The program is delivered to parents in groups and they meet once in a week and only one session is delivered per week in every group facilitated by the two community-based facilitators.

We do also create accessible safe spaces for the youths and juveniles for purposes of providing early interventions such as educational and recreational programs that addresses youth delinquency at community. Youths use these safe spaces to meet and share experiences with one another and use the safe space as a platform to learn and build their resilience to mitigate factors that expose them to youth delinquency at community level. The intervention entails culturally relevant and age-appropriate discussions like on reproductive health/sexuality, financial literacy, bullying and teasing, conflict resolution, physical violence to mention delivered in a group setting once a week by peer educators to challenge their norms, beliefs and practices towards youth delinquency. The safe spaces bring and keep these youths together, provide them opportunity to learn about youth delinquency, access psycho-social support, increase income and enhance peer to peer counseling to overcome past experience.

We do also mobilize the youths and provide them with hands on skill trainings to empower them with skills that facilitate participation in income generating activities in the community. We train vulnerable youths in handcraft skills such as shopping bag making, sanitary pads production, soap making, craft shoe making, baking, hair dressing, carpentry and tailoring for purposes of enabling them to generate income that can facilitate improvement in income levels geared towards reducing poverty levels among the youths and improving the quality of lives of the youths thereby reducing the threats of youth delinquency to the general public and the environment.