Rationale

Nyisango is an organization which came to life as a result of the observations made by a few women living in the city who realized that the women in the rural areas are going through tough times, marginalized, poor, some forced into remarriage, and they were dying at a very high rate from HIV infections and re-infections. The women did not own any property and they had to forfeit all upon the deaths of their husbands. The orphans and vulnerable children suffered the same as the women. All these made this group determined to mitigate for changes which could allow women and vulnerable children to live decent lives. Hence they began to move from one village to the other mentoring the community to change their attitudes about women and treat them as human beings. Nyisango began to train groups of women to stand up for their rights. In some cases they provided funds secretly for women to hire lawyers to help them reclaim their late husbands’ property including pensions. Many women were trained with great success to become small scale farmers, business women, community health workers teaching about the dangers of HIV, and so on.

Nyisango is committed to change the community’s attitude towards poverty, disease, harmful culture and traditional practices, i.e. (1)  train  the community, particularly women to improve their livelihood by engaging in small and viable Income Generating Activities( 2) build the community’s capacity to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, (3) Provide educational opportunities to needy and vulnerable children vulnerable children

Nyisango strives to help adults and youth to take charge of their communities by coming together to advocate for the community needs as well as looking after their environment, claiming their rights, for example many groups have now been able agitate for clean  water in their villages, they plant trees instead of copping them down, and improve their food security by improving their agricultural practices.

Nyisango has gone out its way improve the rural woman’s health by identifying their self-limiting beliefs which prevent them from social, economic, educational development. For example,it trains communities, especially the usually marginalized women to take part in business, to understand andstop the traditions and cultural practices in this era of HIV/AIDS and give priority to educating their children, both boys and girls.

Nyisango comprises Christian women whose faith mandates that they be their brothers’ keepers. Therefore  but the organization through these women intermingle with the society to identify the needs of the people, such as hunger, disease, homelessness or spiritual needs and try to meet the people at their points of need.

This organization’s work is Christ-led. It has shown outstanding compassion towards the poor, the sick, HIV orphans and widows and all the underprivileged and vulnerable inhe society. The organization is currently paying school fees to ten (10 orphans), two of which are now at the university. They have provided shelter to some widows who were thrown out by the husbands’ relatives because they declined to be inherited. Many times the organization tries to help the marginalized people to get their rights/justice from the relatives and even the government.

Because of the needs which were observed in the community by Nyisango, some tough decisions had to be made to raise funds to do the work. The members through their leadership have humbled themselves to do odd jobs to raise money. The organization have registered an outside catering company for which it is now known. Nyisango is frquently hired to offer services at weddings, funerals, church meetings, and parties and so on. This is the main source of Nyisango funds. some of the constituent groups have been trained to offer the same services in their various locations to raise fund at local level