Organisation Profile

African Rural Development Initiatives (ARDI) was established as a result of community concerns about the situation around them, ranging from; early marriages / pregnancies, among school children resulting into school dropouts, HIV/AIDS pandemic, poor child-parent relationships, poor maternal health, household poverty, illiteracy only to mention but a few.

Collaboration

ARDI has worked with various organizations and donor Agencies which include Aids Care Education Training (ACET)-Mbale, Work-Aid-UK, Cord aid, Foundation for Development of Needy Communities (F.D.N.C), Action Aid Uganda, CARE and Manafwa District Local Government.  Currently, it is in partnership with Adopteer een geit-the Netherlands.

Vision
A rural community of physically, psychologically and morally competent persons.


Mission
To contribute to the well being of the rural disadvantaged society.

In pursuit of her mission, ARDI has ably carried out activities that have led to some remarkable achievements for example, a total of 351 child mothers have received a goat each, 75 women have started small scale businesses through ARDI microfinance scheme, 106 child mothers have been counseled and gone back to school, youths have been trained to start up income generating activities.

A youth drop-in centre has been put in place where youths come & interact and is equipped with In-door Games, Library & a counseling room. These among other benefits have contributed to meet the needs of the people in the area which it operates.

Objectives

ARDI has adopted the following objectives in order to attain its objectives.
•    To create awareness among the people in rural communities on HIV/AIDS, prevent the spread and mitigate its impact.
•    Scale up Life Skills Education among young people and the wider community.
•    To carry out Family Life Education among families.
•    Create a youth friendly atmosphere for youth meetings and interactions.
•    Promote voluntary counseling and testing.
•    To give psychosocial support to child / teenage mothers, orphans and vulnerable children, parents and the wider community.
•    To empower young people and the community women with vocational skills.
•    Promote Functional Adult Literacy (F.A.L).
•    To initiate a savings and credit scheme.
•    Pursue a lawful and gainful aspiration deemed desirable to the attainment of the above objectives.

Activities

Currently, ARDI is implementing the following Activities;
•    Child / Teenage mothers’ goats project
•    Community Education and training
•    Family Life Education
•    Vocational training programme.
•    HIV/AIDS Counseling  and testing
•    Youth centre
•    Functional Adult Literacy
•    Micro finance scheme
•    Nursery Education
•    Sun cooking

Project Sustainability

The management of ARDI has come up with the following ideas to ensure sustainability.  The following ideas are deemed viable to lead to sustainability.
•    Provision of quality vocational skills in the catchments area.
•    Establishing internship programme
•    First offspring of the original goats is brought back.
•    Scale up Income Generating Activities
•    Improved outreach programmes.