Standard Chartered has announced a donation of Ugx 166,500,000 (One hundred and sixty-six million, five hundred thousand) to BRAC Uganda to support adolescents under the GOAL project.
The six-month project intervention will seek to prevent, mitigate and build the resilience of adolescent girls and community members to enable them deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Goal project is a community investment initiative which uses sports and life skills education to transform the lives of young women and girls under the Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescent program (ELA). The project’s objective is to equip girls with financial education and life skills so that they can play active leadership roles in their families and communities. This is done through supporting girls’ ages 9 to 22 years through five modules which are: Be yourself, Be healthy, Be empowered, Be money savvy and Be Independent.
The trainings are conducted by 64 Goal Coaches in 64 clubs in 8 branches were the project is being implemented. Every year a sample size of 1,500 girls are selected to fill in the baseline survey which is used to measure the project success that year.
With support from Standard Chartered Bank Uganda, BRAC started implementing the Goal Programme in October 2014. As of 2019, BRAC Uganda’s Goal project had impacted on the lives of 42,000 adolescent girls in rural and urban communities in 9 districts and established 8 adolescents’ safe houses in 64 villages of Kampala, Mbarara, Isingiro, Lyantonde, Wakiso, Kayunga and Mukono Districts. These clubs are facilitated by 8 trained Goal coaches who are tasked to train and recruit 6,500 adolescent girls and young women to undertake the Goal curriculum training for a period of 10 months.
Regina Mukiri the Head, Corporate Affairs, Brand & Marketing Standard Chartered Bank Uganda Limited while handing over the donation said:
“It is our imperative to support various categories of vulnerable person impacted by the pandemic so we are pleased to now extend a COVID relief donation particularly to adolescent girls under the Goal project. Our priority is to help the girls cope with the effects of COVID-19 pandemic and remain buoyant. This support is critical to extending to some of them the services and support they require. We’re extremely proud to partner with our long-term partner BRAC to roll out the support to these youths.”
Dr. George Owuor Matete PhD, Country Director, BRAC Uganda while receiving the donation said: “This donation from Standard Chartered during the COVID-19 pandemic is timely in ensuring the continuity of the GOAL project implementation. We are very grateful to Standard Chartered Bank for the strong support they have given to the GOAL girls during this period as beyond the monetary contribution, they have also continued to organize a number of virtual engagements with the Goal project beneficiaries to help equip them with necessary coping mechanisms and skills during this pandemic.
“The youths who have participated in the Bank led webinars organized amidst the COVID 19 pandemic mostly appreciated the self-discovery and mentorship discussions and topics such as; How to cope with life during the pandemic, building mental resilience during COVID 19 crisis and the financial education clinics. These sessions have enabled the GOAL girls develop a strong social capital, build resilience and learn new ideas and skills.”
