06. Women and Children with Albinism Uganda (WACWAU)

Women and Children with Albinism in Uganda (WACWAU) is a registered NGO serving the needs of the most vulnerable in their community. Across Africa, particularly East Africa, people with Albinism experience human rights violations and abuses. Their economic, political, social and cultural rights are often compromised in devastating ways and societal ignorance about Albinism has contributed to exclusion, stigmatization and the denial of basic rights such as education and health. Broad ignorance, misbeliefs, witchcraft and superstitions have also endangered their lives. In everyday life, those affected by Albinism, particularly women and children, are frequently treated as less than human and are not considered capable of amounting to anything.

Just outside of Wakiso Town in Uganda, WACWAU runs a small shelter for approximately 30 women and children affected by Albinism.

For the past five years, Fondazione Cariello Corbino has been contributing on a monthly basis to provide for the social needs at this shelter serving this highly marginalised community (about 1.570 €/month for food, medical care, clothing, beds, construction of new dormitories, kitchen space & security walls, clean water, school fees, guard dogs, etc).

A close-knit community but one fraught with constant needs, urgent situations and ongoing challenges, WACWAU is now our main project and program area of support and we have committed to them for the long term.

This organisation also runs alongside it onsite a social enterprise soapmaking initiative called Mama Mzungu (White Mama) whose mission is to empower women affected by Albinism through job creation, skills development and economic self-reliance.

What we have learned through our work with WACWAU, that in order to allow Mama Mzungu to flourish and grow, this community needs steadfast support in other areas so that the women involved are also provided with the stability they need to feel safe and supported in their work.

We are looking to raise a minimum of €25.000 which will enable us to support again throughout the year.

This baseline amount of money will provide for the above aforementioned list of needs, but we also want to help them pay for their annual International Albinism Awareness Day event on June 13th, a global day of recognition established by the United Nations in 2014 (https://www.un.org/en/observances/albinism-day).

We would also like to assist with the purchase of a neighboring plot of land on which WACWAU needs to build a new shelter for all these women and children. The current facility has been hosted by the generous, bighearted mother of WACWAU’s Executive Director since 2019 but the time has come for the shelter to shift from that site.

They also need to modernise and expand all facilities not only to provide more adequate housing and a safe environment for everyone but to also enable them to grow some crops to alleviate any periods of food scarcity, upgrade dormitories, construct compost latrines, conduct vital onsite services for members of the community (skin cancer clinics, counseling/therapies, sensitisation and education regarding Albinism, events), host volunteers and also run a hen and egg project for added dietary protein for all inhabitants.

So anything raised above our minimum need of €25.000, will then go towards assisting with the initial purchase of the land (approximately €18.000) and subsequent planning for construction of the new facility looking forwards to 2025.

To add some perspective to just one element of the stigma this community faces, single mothers (with melanin) who give birth to children with Albinism are often rejected and ostracized from their communities just as much as the child and this presents this NGO with a constant number of women in search of support and safety. Also, quite often, desperate families not knowing what to do with their children with Albinism will quite literally abandon them outside the WACWAU gates and never to be seen or heard from again. Several of the mothers and children currently onsite are there as a result of these two scenarios and indeed, have resulted in the need for this shelter in the first place.