Breaking the Silence on Domestic Violence — Health Counseling for Survivors

What Happens Behind Closed Doors Is a Public Health Crisis

In many communities across Western Uganda, domestic violence is treated as a private matter — something to be endured in silence, settled within the household, never spoken of outside. This silence kills. It destroys mental health, breaks families, and denies children the safe, stable homes they deserve to grow up in.

HAFT Uganda is currently working in communities to break that silence — with trained volunteers, structured counseling support, and pathways to safety for survivors who need them.

The Scale of the Problem

Across Uganda, gender-based violence affects an estimated 56% of women aged 15 to 49. In rural communities like those HAFT serves, the figures are higher — and the barriers to help are greater:

• Many survivors do not recognize that what they are experiencing is abuse
• Financial dependence on abusive partners traps women in dangerous situations
• Fear of social ostracism, community judgment, and family pressure silences survivors
• Legal and medical services are distant, unfamiliar, and often unaffordable
• Children who witness domestic violence face lasting psychological harm that shapes their own adult relationships

"I had been suffering for four years. I thought it was normal — that every wife had to endure it. The HAFT health worker came for another visit and noticed my injuries. She sat with me and listened. I did not know help existed until that day."
— Survivor, name withheld, Kasese District

How Our Team Is Responding Right Now

Community Volunteer Training in First-Response Counseling

We are currently training community health workers to recognize the physical and behavioral signs of domestic abuse, to provide compassionate first-response psychological support, and to make safe, appropriate referrals to medical, legal, and shelter services.

Community Awareness Sessions — Challenging Harmful Norms

We run community sessions specifically designed to engage men and boys as partners in ending domestic violence — not as perpetrators to be condemned, but as fathers, brothers, and neighbors who can choose to protect rather than harm.

Survivor Follow-Up and Safety Planning

Our volunteers maintain ongoing relationships with identified survivors — checking in, providing continued emotional support, and helping with safety planning for those in ongoing dangerous situations.

How Your Donation Supports Survivors

• $20 — covers one community volunteer's monthly transport for survivor follow-up visits
• $75 — funds a community men's engagement session on gender-based violence prevention
• $200 — trains one community health worker in first-response counseling techniques
• $400 — supports one month of our full domestic violence response program in one sub-county

This Work Is Quiet, Difficult, and Absolutely Necessary

There are no dramatic before-and-after photos from this program. The victories are quiet — a woman who escapes before the violence escalates further, a child who grows up in a safer home, a man who chooses a different path. But they are real, and they are life-changing.

Your donation supports the volunteer who shows up at a door, who listens without judgment, and who connects a survivor to the help they never knew they could ask for. Give today.