Partners for Community Health and Development Organisation  (PACHEDO) is a Not for profit community Based Organisation (CBO) that started in 2007 by a team of volunteer community development workers.  These included social workers, agriculturalists, health workers, teachers, lawyers and academics. The organisation was established with aim of supporting communities to live a dignified, healthy, and productive life, socio-economically empowered to innovatively meet and demand for their basic needs and rights. PACHEDO targets the vulnerable population of Gulu comprised of children, women and youth exposed to violence and exclusion, Persons living with HIV/AIDS, adolescents with reproductive health challenges, the mentally ill, youth, the older persons and persons with disability in conflict, post conflict and natural disaster affected communities.

Since then PACHEDO has been committed in providing services in areas of protection particularly covering transitional justice, GBV prevention and response, child protection, education. Community health targeting Reproductive health and HIV/AIDS care and support, mental health, WASH and waste management and Nutrition and in Agriculture and sustainable livelihoods of Gulu.

PACHEDO’ s Empowering  women  against Gender-Based Violence  Bungatira sub-county, Gulu district  focuses at addressing women rights abuses, violence and exploitation arising from the imbalance of power due to accessing productive resources such as land, water, finance and inequalities in employment. These inequalities are particularly  true for single mothers whose children were born either in the camps or during abduction, widows, elderly women, women with mental disabilities, HIV/AIDS, women with disabilities and rural married women fully accustomed to cultural norms and practices.

The project intends to address such imbalance by empowering women and their protection structures with information about women rights (according to CEDAW), equip them with skills relevant for women to voice out and respond to various forms of abuses, exploitation and violence. The specific objectives include:

1.To increase knowledge of 400 disadvantaged women and other community members about women rights to productive resources (land, finances and employment), available legal instruments and the role of the state and various stake holders in defending women against all forms of exploitation, abuse and violence in Bungatira Sub-county .
2. To build the capacity of 16 Women Rights Advocacy Groups (WRAG) on life skills and trans-formative leadership to be able to provide peer to peer rights and policy awareness and community engagements.
3. To empower 400 women with employable business and apprenticeship skills to engage in productive livelihood activities and fight against stigma and discrimination.
4. Facilitate disadvantaged women with information, skills tailored to advocate and promote Behavioural Change and Communication and support for social economic empowerment for all rural women.