By Matthew Okello
TORORO
The Child Health and Development center, a department in Makerere University school of Medicine in partnership with the ministry of gender and Tororo district local government, has launched a project dubbed Parenting for Respectability.
The project that will run in two sub counties of Iyolwa and Kwapa of Tororo district is aimed at scaling up parenting and to promote the well-being of children and women in Uganda through inter and multidisciplinary research.
While launching the project on 12th December 2023 at the Teacher’s Resource center, Dr. Godfrey Siu the senior lecturer of Makerere University at the College of Health sciences said that they promote this program to Tororo district because it’s one of the districts in Uganda with poor parenting methods.
Siu revealed that the project has 16 modules where 8 are supposed to be attended by same sex gender and the other 8 are mixed and it’s targeting over 6000 parents in the district.
The Tororo district deputy chief administrative officer, Joseph Magiri welcomed the project noting that the family is the foundation of the society that must be protected arguing that most of the problems the country is facing are as a result of failed families.
He further noted that children’s Rights are being violated because of poor parenting standards and parents producing children they haven’t planned for.
Ruth Maguta, the principal social development officer in the department of family and culture in the ministry of gender says that the ministry has Okayed this program because it has come to remind parents about their responsibilities.
Maguta says that they are using the manual of this program to develop ongoing standardization of parenting work in Uganda that will form the National parenting Manual and government stance in all parenting related issues.
She called upon the district to use the parenting for Respectability to redeem its image of poor parenting that is negatively recognized all over the country.
Tororo district LCV chairperson, John Okea welcomed the program noting that he is going to use the right channel to lure districts into incorporating parenting funding into the district budget with an argument that no district can stand without a family.
With the integration of parenting, the chairperson expects violence in homes to reduce.
