The USAID Mission Director, Richard Nelson; USAID’s Office Director for Humanitarian Assistance and Transitions Office, Lisa Campbell Gutierrez; World Food Program’s Country Representative in Uganda, Abdirahman Meygag, and Uganda Government officials visited AVSI’s “Graduating to Resilience” Activity in Southwestern Uganda on Tuesday, September 21st, 2021. Along with the AVSI team, the group met households who were able to graduate out of extreme poverty during the first cohort. The delegation also observed a scorecard exercise used to assess whether households can be enrolled in the second cohort, starting in January 2022. The Activity, which graduated over 70 percent of enrolled households in its first phase, will now support 7,200 households (3,600 refugees and 3,600 Ugandans) in this second and final phase.
The delegation visited Charlotte Bahati’s household and was in awe of her transformation story. Charlotte is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she used to farm maize and beans and sold groceries to support her seven children. After moving to Uganda, her business took a turn for the worse.