Gulu’s Marginalised Youth Need Support for them to Realise their Potential

The Socially Excluded Youth (SEYs) are an issue of concern in Gulu City for both the community and the leaders.

They are grafted as criminals who destabilize the peace of the city, especially at night, thus calling them names such as “aguu”. The word aguu does not sound well, and causes trauma among the SEYs, leading to self-neglect and self-denial.

The Consequences of COVID-19 on Youth Reproductive Health (CONSCOV) project team at Gulu University has been conducting outreaches to these youth to find out the exact problems they are facing and also give them free medical services. This is being done in partnership with Gulu Regional Referral Hospital and Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU).

CONSCOV researchers Judith Awacorach (l) and Dr. Agatha Alidri (3rd l) pose for a photo with some socially excluded youth at Olailong, Gulu City

We are finding that most of these are needy youth who will welcome any services that can help them better their lives.

At Pece-Vanguard and Olailong centres, there was a very positive response. More than 100 youth at Olailong and over 170 at Pece presented their reproductive health issues including sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea, and they were served.

In Kanyagoga A, the story was a bit different. Different community members roamed the tent, which gave us the opportunity to observe behavioural variations between the SEYs and other community members. About 140 people turned up here for the services, most of them under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The ones at Kanyagoga seemed to be a little uncollaborative, compared to the SEYs in the other two outreaches.

Patrick Kabwijamu (l) interviews a socially excluded youth at Pece, Gulu City

From the three outreaches, what the team noted was that these young people need a lot of support for them to realise their potential.