Compassionate Swaziland - Livelihood and Vocational Skills Training

While a lot of efforts are being directed towards HIV prevention through community education, behaviour change communication and impact mitigation a lot more needs to be done to break the vulnerability that leads to new infections. Unemployment and rampant poverty have been identified globally as the driving force behind high levels of HIV infections in Swaziland. Due to unemployment young men in Swaziland are idle and turn to criminal activities like drug addiction and mugging to be able to earn a meal. This makes them potential candidates for rape and irresponsible sexual behaviour. On the other hand young women living in poverty are vulnerable to sexual abuse as they are forced to exchange sex for money and food. As a result vulnerable children living in poverty are most likely not to complete school due to child labour compared to non vulnerable children. Peer pressure has also been identified to be a major cause for HIV infections.

Compassionate Swaziland aims at creating opportunities in livelihoods and vocational training skills with a view to enhancing out of school vulnerable children a chances of self employment. The life skills will include welding, crop farming, livestock keeping, information and communication technology, carpentry, masonry, hair dressing and hair cut, catering and dress making. Once they are trained the vulnerable children are facilitated with start up capital inform of equipments and raw materials relevant to their areas of training. The organization is already training girls on various life skills that are profound to improved quality of life like making of Vaseline, making of floor mats using recycled polythene paper