In Uganda, like much of Sub-Saharan Africa, children become their parents’ primary caregiver if a parent is struck with a life-threatening condition. With no source of family income, the child typically quits school to earn whatever living can be found. Additional responsibilities often include making sure the household has food, cleaning/bathing the parent and acquiring morphine or other pain-relieving drugs from a palliative care organization. After the parent(s) die, the child caregiver is usually taken in by members of the extended family. That extended family is often unable to provide more than the bare minimum of food, clothing and schooling for the orphaned children.

In addition to being orphaned, these children are frequently vulnerable in other ways. Some are ill themselves and in need of physical and psychosocial care. The Road to Hope program was created to assist vulnerable child caregivers by providing educational, psychological, social, emotional and nutritional support.