Resilience building for child survivors of sexual exploitation: NGO practices in Kampala, Uganda

Abstract

Childhood should be a time that is enjoyable. However, survivors of sexual exploitation in Africa face a lot of hardships. Evidence has it that most of the efforts to build resilience are guided by western models. In Africa, especially in Uganda, resilience strategies have not been thoroughly examined, leading to a lack of understanding of what NGOs do in building children’s resilience. Moreover, the voices of children remain largely overlooked in this scenario. The study therefore sought to explore the nature of hardships child survivors of sexual exploitation experience, show how children and NGOs staff conceptualize resilience; assess the approaches to building resilience by NGOs, and work with NGOs’ staff to develop a resilience framework that can be used to guide delivery of resilience interventions to survivors of sexual exploitation. The study adopted an exploratory design and used qualitative methods to collect and analyse the data. The findings were collected from a cross- section of NGO staff and child survivors of SEC within Kampala City. The study findings revealed that child survivors of sexual exploitation had experienced adversities during their childhood including family separation, death, extreme poverty and exposure to multiple forms of violence. These difficulties made them vulnerable to trafficking as well as sexual exploitation. The children’s conceptualisation of resilience varied but a common understanding pointed to having hope and pursuing dreams regardless of what happened in the past. The NGO actors’ understanding of resilience centred on young people’s survival and building their assets to cope positively and also lead successful lives. Accordingly, three broad resilience building intervention approaches emerged from their work, namely, i) psychosocial interventions; ii) economic empowerment; and iii) building social capital. NGO interventions utilized many tools but lacked specific tools for building resilience to guide their activities. The survivors’ mastery and use of vocational skills as a solution to many of their economic needs was a key indicator of successful adjustment. The major implication of this study is that NGO interventions for building resilience for child survivors of sexual exploitation in a low- income setting ought to be multi-faceted to deal with children’s multiple needs and concerns. This is more relevant in the absence of effective safety nets. The findings point to the importance of involving young people in playing a role in resilience building strategies.