URF is a 501(c)(3) grassroots non-profit organization that empowers AIDS orphans, underprivileged youth and women to fight poverty in rural communities, through educational and sustainable development opportunities.
Our objectives include: - Providing a safe and nurturing environment for AIDS orphans to receive proper shelter, food, education, health care, and set them on a path to independent adulthood. - Creating opportunities for underprivileged youth and women to access resources for formal and informal education, practical skills training, and economic development. - Mobilizing local and international partners to provide access to livelihood enhancement resources to ensure sustainable social and economic development of rural communities.
Our community programs include:
- Hope Academy, a secondary school that provides a well-rounded quality education for orphans and other vulnerable children in rural villages. The facility also houses the community library, a computer laboratory, and a community resource center that provides space for youth leadership camps, business and agriculture training for farmers, community seminars, and adult literacy classes among other enriching programs.
- Health: Medical Clinic, medical camps, village health workers, and health education in schools and communities
- Women empowerment - crafts, entreprenuership and leadership training, microfinance
- Youth empowerment: youth camps, peer counseling, self-help projects, community services, leadership skills
- Leadership Institute for leadership development among youth and adults
- Village bank enabling over 200 rural women to access credit to start small income-generating projects;
- Building homes for child-headed families
- Water and Sanitation - building clean water, sanitation and solar energy systems through a partnership with Engineers With Boarders
