Summary of HALEA’s 2016 Activities’ Report.
The Humanists Association for Leadership, Equity and Accountability (HALEA)- Youth Support Centre continued with its empowerment activities in 2016.HALEA operates a Teens’ Empowerment Program in Kampala Slums aimed at keeping teenagers in school, avoid pregnancies, arranged and forced marriages due to retrogressive and oppressive cultural and religious practices in Uganda.
We do this through the promotional of critical thinking activities that involve:
•Debate
•Essay writings Music
•Dance and Drama

We opened up another HALEA branch in Lwengo - Masaka We organized 36 intra school debates throughout the year and two inter school debate that was held on at Kampala Student Center and Grace Fellowship Primary Schools. The prominent topics discussed in the debates were on:

• Corporal punishments
• Female Genital Mutilation
•Creationism
•Freedom of expression
•Domestic violence
• LGBTI Rights
•School dropout
Use of contraceptives
•Relevance of religion
• Legalization of abortion, legalization of prostitution, homosexuality and importance of sex education.
In conjunction with PAP organization, HALEA organized seven public debates (The Open Talk Debates) involving opinion leaders, politicians and members of the community and these were televised on WBS Television.

We organized 7 Peer Advocacy Trainings and 9 Peer Leadership Trainings at different schools. The peer advocacy trainings help in creating peer educators and trainers that later on train fellow peers and ensure the sustainability of the project. We have registered 133 teens in the Entertainment Club and receive skills in playing music instruments, acting and singing. To expose our teens’ talents, we organized several talents search shows at Kampala Students Centre, Bright Way Hill School and at Bat Valley Hall where the trained teens showcased the acquired skills in Music, Dance and Drama.

Our full cooperation with Pearl Vocational Training College started and we supported a total of 26 young mothers to learn vocational skills at the college. I addition, we supported 11 young mothers to go back to main stream schools, our support included fees, scholastic materials and medical care.

A total of 1,047 teenagers were empowered in 2015. Our main challenge remains in the inadequacy of funds given the so many activities we do, we would appreciate getting individual supporters to support some of activities above. We were engaged in supporting the Refugees in camps in Northern Uganda and we were able to mobilise items and goods worth millions of shillings and served them to refugees in December 2016.
All our activities can be seen in photos posted on HALEA website and Pearl Blog.
Please write to us directly through: haleauganda@gmail.com. Thanks to you.

The Humanists Association for Leadership, Equity and Accountability (HALEA) runs a Teens’ Empowerment Program in Kampala Slums aimed at keeping teenagers in school, avoid pregnancies, arranged and forced marriages due to retrogressive and oppressive cultural and religious practices in Uganda.
We do this through The promotional of critical thinking activities that involve:
• Debates
•Essay writings
•Through music , Dance and Drama.

We organized 53 intra school debates throughout the year and one inter school debate that was held on 24/07/2015 at Children’s Corner. The prominent topics discussed in the debates were on corporal punishments, Female Genital Mutilation, creationism, press freedom, freedom of expression, domestic violence, LGBTI Rights, school dropout, ICC, use of contraceptives, relevance of religion, legalization of abortion, legalization of prostitution, homosexuality and importance of sex education. We also organized seven public debates involving opinion leaders, politicians and members of the community.

We organized 11 Peer Advocacy Trainings and 10 Peer Leadership Trainings.A total 1012 essays were written by teens in 7 schools of which 73 essays were published in both Issue 7 and Issue 8 of the Open Talk Magazine. We organized 11 Peer Advocacy Trainings and 10 Peer Leadership Trainings at different schools were organized. The peer advocacy trainings help in creating peer educators and trainers that later on train fellow peers and ensure the sustainability of the project. We assisted 33 teens through the teen’s assistance scheme. We provided 26 with scholastic materials and school fees, 7 with medication.

We encourage students to share their success stories given our intervention in empowering them.12 Teens have so far posted their stories on the website. Their stories give an accurate account on how HALEA has transformed their lives. Several other stories have been written and will be posted.

You can check out our activities on www.haleauganda.org/ We have registered 135 teens in the Entertainment Club and receive skills in playing music instruments, acting and singing. To expose our teens’ talents, we organized several talents search shows at Kampala Students Centre, Bright Way Hill School and at Bat Valley Hall where the trained teens showcased the acquired skills in Music, Dance and Drama. A total of 2,969 teenagers were empowered in 2015. Our main challenge remains in the inadequacy of funds given the so many activities we do, we would appreciate getting individual supporters to support some of activities above.

Please write to us directly through: haleauganda@gmail.com. Thanks to you