The Kyabazinga of Busoga, HRH Gabula Nadiope IV, has commissioned the “Neyendeire” Development Initiative-NDI, aimed at spearheading women-led development drives in Busoga Kingdom.
NDI, a consortium of different women-led village development and morality instilling groups, was first launched by First Lady Janet Museveni in 2016 under the leadership of the current patron, Dorothy Kisaka, the Executive Director of KCCA.
The initiative empowers women with skills in acceptable children upbringing values, education, food security, farming, and primary healthcare initiatives, aimed at empowering grassroots households with both economic empowerment and acceptable sanitation practices.
NDI has since formed a sacco, where interested parties can easily acquire friendly credit facilities to engage themselves in small-scale startups, which Gabula says are essential in ending poverty within the Busoga sub-region.
Speaking at the launch on Friday, Gabula said that, NDI’s homestead nursery approach of enhancing development, is the magic bullet towards the realization of improved household incomes since it encompasses all the drivers of empowering beneficiary communities ranging from the basic areas of food security, education and general health wellbeing.
Gabula also said that Busoga kingdom has a bottom-top approach system, of rallying communities to involve themselves in economic transformation initiatives, from the village clan heads all through to the royal chiefs’ cabinets.
He further rallied NDI founders to foster the inclusion of men and youths in the quest to enable unified development within the target communities.
Kisaka says that under the initiative, women are tipped on the different soft skills of ending domestic violence within their homes, through offering both moral and financial support to their spouses, some of whom are overwhelmed with the burden of single-handedly fending for their households and instead resort to violence as solace during times of financial crisis.
Kisaka further notes that NDI member groups are often mobilized to embrace government-led economic empowerment initiatives like the recently rolled out Emyooga fund, which has since enabled most of them to boost their enterprises. URN
