About Us

Our Goal - Promoting Rural Development

Part I

Our Profile:

To keep up to date on all our current projects, please visit our Facebook page at the link below:

RRHS Facebook Page

Our Executive Summary:

Rwenzori Rural Health Services is a Community Based Organization  founded in 2005 in Kasese district. It is registered with the District Local Government and presently operates in kasese District.

It’s broad objectives are:

1. Promoting Rural Health Services

2. Sensitizing the community on development issues

3. Participating in such other development issues as planned by the local governments, the government of Uganda, and partners. 

Our Mission Statement:

Our Vision:

CORE VALUES:

Part II

 District Profile: 

Location:

Kasese District is located in western Uganda, and lies between latitudes 0-12'S and 0-26'N, longitude 29-04'E and 30-18'W, with the equator passing across it. Kasese town is a distance of about 400km tarmac road via Fort Portal from Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. It can also be reached by air from Entebbe International Airport in Uganda within 45 minutes of flighty. 

In the west, it borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while in the north, it boarders Bundibugyo district, in the northeast, Kabarole District and in the south Bushenyi district.

The total land area is 2729 Sq Km of which 461sq km are covered with waters and swamps. Queen Elizabeth national park covers 885 Sq Km and Rwenzori National Park 652 Sq Km. both being part of the whole district area.

Part III

Information about the organisation:

Name of the organization: 

Rwenzori Rural Health Services.

Contact Person(s): 

Contact Postal Address:

P.O Box 263, Kasese

Uganda

Part IIII 

A Letter From Our Founder: 

RURAL AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

By: Kiima T. Charles (2009)

Director: Rwenzori Rural Health Services.

Bachelors Degree -Democracy and Development Studies

Of Uganda Martyrs University Kampala-Uganda- East Africa. 

During my study at the university, I founded this organization, http://rrhskasese.blogspot.com/

I developed this kind of write up on Rural and Rural Development to assist most people outside there to appreciate what it means to be rural. 

The Term “rural” can be characterized by two different futures. First, rural people live in farm stead. The number of households varies from 5,000 to 10,000 per village.  Most of the people depend on agriculture for all their life.

Factors that are used to define rural areas may include:

Demographic: Rural areas may have low density population and are geographically isolated.

Economic: There is a simple division of labour and a low degree of economic specialization. Rural areas also lack a variety in the ways people make a living.

Social structure: Rural areas are characterized by informality; social connections’ are more immediate (Face-to face).

Cultural: Rural is seen as traditional, slow to change. It is important to note that rural in this view, simply refers to ways of thinking that may vary reflecting localized context, so what rural in one country means, may not be rural in another.

 Defining Rural Development:

Rural Development means promoting economic, social culture political- institutional aspects in equal measure. These approaches aim to achieve sustainable growth that benefits the whole community. Rural development helps to improve food security and promote health, create income and employment chances. In general, rural development focuses on developing areas.  

 

Problems facing rural areas:

• Rural poverty: Worldwide, poverty has a rural face. According to UMU-LGHR211: pg7, Sustainable Rural Development, three quarters of the world’s poor are found in poor regions,  such as the western region of Uganda, (Rwenzori Region) often in extreme poverty and without adequate means to achieve food security for themselves or their families. Most families eat once a day, income generation opportunities are limited, and most people in rural areas earn a living from farming.
• Rural areas lack adequate, affordable and reliable infrastructure services (Transportation, water supply and sanitation, and electricity). Women and children are the most affected.
• Women cook with inefficient stoves in kitchens filled with smoke that damages their lungs and eyes. (They do this with their young babies at the back!!).
• Families mainly raise crops and animals for subsistence because they have little access to markets, inputs and vital information, the local roads are often impassable.  
• Villages lack electricity, this affects children doing their school home work and discourages expansion of nonfarm businesses that could provide alternative sources of income.
• According to UMU-LGHR211: pg8, HIV/AIDS has killed over 20 million Africans, and orphaned over 10 million children. HIV/AIDS undermines agriculture systems and affects the food security of rural families.
• Rural poor score more poorly on all indicators of human development than people living in urban areas.

A new strategy for rural development:

Development is the process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy, such as technological advance, and provision of health services.  Development requires the removal of major sources of un-freedoms such social deprivation, poverty, and neglect of public facilities.

 

1.    In order to be successful in the development system, I strongly believe that the strategy should include promotion of global partnership for development. This should involve travelling to our area, aiming to discover the   real cause of the challenge and advocating for promotion of accountability that focuses on pictorial.

2.  In order to succeed in development, we should all advocate for education. Education is a means to develop integrally, to achieve the key for success in life, to acquire values and principles of life, to know what is right and follow it, and to know what is wrong and avoid it, to positively change society for the better, to have a clear vision, a clear program for life and the means to reach the vision and fulfill the desired program.

My research topic at university was to analyze the causes of poverty in Rukoki sub-county, kasese- district-Uganda and my finding was:

• It came clearly that poverty among men and women in this area is caused by the problem of producing many children without the capacity to provide for them quality education and provision for food. It was noted that in most families here, there are many people to feed daily while those involved in productive resources are always few.
• Most people are poor because they get diverted and misuse their own earnings. Money that should be used to take children to school is misused in luxuries.
• Men were worried about giving freedom to women without control. It was further noted that it is wrong for women to join development organizations when their husbands are not informed.
• Most women and men are poor because they lack meaningful support in production. For example they grow crops in areas that are not accessible. Most families do not have land where they can grow profitable crops. As a result, they have limited avenues of raising family income.
• Other people that tend to be progressing, lack farming implements like hoes.

I hope this will give you a good understanding of what causes poverty in this area. From this back ground, I concentrated on developing: - http://rrhskasese.blogspot.com/ . There is need to visit this organization and plan to link  good volunteers, tourists, intern’s, retired individuals,  Donors and organizations.