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1. Executive summary

Hope and Comfort is a tax-exempt and not-for-profit foundation that serves all of Kanungu County, south western Uganda.  Hope and Comfort Foundation’s goal is to alleviate hunger and food security in all parts of Kanungu through collecting, growing, and packaging food for distribution through a network of service agencies and programs that serve in our target population groups.  Our services include food box programs, emergency food programs, and a woman’s farm group that provides opportunities for self-sufficiency activities for women.  Hope and Comfort foundation receives support from charitable organizations and corporate sponsorship.

Approximately 60% of Kanungu residents qualify for assistance from Hope and Comfort Foundation.  Our client base is low-income people, mainly families, who need emergency help to put food on the table.  Nearly half of those served by the program are children.  Hope and Comfort Foundation operates a warehouse facility where we store donated or rescued food for distribution.  The program actively solicits food from local food growers especially women volunteer groups and women farms.  In addition, Hope and Comfort Foundation does its work and supports over 150 children some of whom are orphaned and other vulnerable who are living with relatives or family friends. The activities of the organisation are supported by well-wishers and friends and most especially women in the community. The women volunteer group is quite an informal group but  has meetings in an informal system of daily activities but all in all they are a productive and reliable group, a group of 50 women both married and single mothers some having lost their husbands to HIV and other health related problems and  left behind to cater for their children.

The women volunteer group are solely dependent on their Agricultural produce which is mostly subsistence farming. Groups are very helpful in this community especially when pooling resources, in times of emergencies and buying seeds, providing needed labour and tools.

The volunteer group is involved in growing fruit trees and vegetables, having been blessed with fertile soils. The land on which they grow these crops has been provided by Kate Orphanage from grants and donations.  Though the project is not on an intensive scale, there is still produce for sale, surplus for consumption for families involved and the children at the orphanage.

The women’s group is mostly involved with growing cabbages, though they are faced with challenges like ill health especially diseases which affects productivity such as malaria and others have low immune system due to HIV aids and even something as simple as a common cold can keep them off the farm for days, Women in Kanungu district and in most rural areas in Uganda provide 88% of farm labor.

Diseases does not affect only the Human population but also their crops cabbages suffer mostly from rot  or wilt and need a lot of time and care. The women also grow fruit tress which at a tender age need time and nourishment, the challenge with fruit trees is that they are a long term investment so the expectations are limited but when mature they are a viable investment because they are perennial and an assurance of income at a given time of year.

One of the core values of HCF is family and we believe that children should be brought up in a family setting and not in an orphanage. This is our core reason for supporting the women’s volunteer groups and farm work by having these children integrated into the community. We support the organizations working to better these children’s lives.  We have evidence that with the support we have given these groups / institutions to better themselves, Individuals within these groups have been able to adopt a lot Orphans and abandoned children, some volunteer and some through adequate education and acceptance.

Our services improves the ability of families to care for children and achieve goals of self-sufficiency. Hope and Comfort Foundation‘s services, now, are a small investment in comparison to cost of ignoring the problem of hunger in the county and the influence it has on a number of health and crime issues.