What is Vplusplus?
The VPlus vocational skills training programme ended in June 2023, but support and skills training for those 113 young graduates with disabilities in Gulu and surrounding districts did not stop there. With funding from private individuals and ETC of PWD trustees, Vplusplus @GDPU began and will continue for the forseeable future.
Post Training support
Gulu Disabled Persons Union (GDPU) can now give long term Post Training support to all those graduates. The first steps : Reflection Meetings and trips to the field to liaise with them all, helped form the programme. What will help them succeed in the future? What will get them, their families and their community to a sustainable life?
Out To The Field
Formal support trips began, visiting all those graduates in their places of work, or not work as the case maybe. Discussing with each person what training might help them – core skills perhaps– the latest hairstyles for hairdressers, how to mend the different motorbikes in your area; different techniques for sweater weavers etc. Inevitably literacy and numeracy – book keeping/ invoicing that sort of thing.
Innovation
The new areas brought in for Vplusplus include training members of the family to temporarily produce your goods when your disability prevents you from working yourself.
Also, peer support: creating local networks with other people with disabilities banding together for practical and moral support, particularly useful for sweater weavers, for example, whose work is seasonal and intensive when the demand comes.
The innovative Revolving Loan scheme will continue to develop during the Vplusplus programme. The scheme provides access to capital for those to whom such access has long been denied. Repayments are carefully calibrated and renegotiated to keep the young business going and to keep the loan fund solvent for the next graduate.
The Vital Role for the Guidance Counsellor
Vplusplus field visits allow the Guidance Counsellor to give support, encouragement, to identify and follow up Safeguarding incidents. Sadly, abuse is, a constant factor in the lives of these graduates. Sometimes that abuse comes from members of the family, sometimes from colleagues at work; often it comes from both. The solutions involve discussion, advocacy, alerting the relevant authorities where necessary, finding safe refuge, medical aid and more; changing the mindset, as the team puts it, is a very slow process
We know, from the earlier etc@gdpu support for businesses programme, that any development in this area is a slow process. But those earlier beneficiaries are now taking their rightful places in their community. Indeed many are entering locol and community politics; succcess will come. We hope that the Vplusplus programme will help these detemined yong people find their own way.
If you would like to see more of the month to month activities on the Vplusplus programme, please go to the Project News tab
For more about the ETC of PWD charity please go to our Home page.
If you would like to give something to help them, please go to our Donate page.
For more about Gulu Disabled Persons Union (GDPU) please go to their Facebook page.
Many Thanks.
ETC of PWD 