Sandra Awilli is a social innovator from Uganda. Facing period poverty as a teenager, she ultimately founded PADShare, a digital tech solution to improve the accessibility of menstrual hygiene necessities for vulnerable girls during the COVID-19 lockdown. She realized that many initiatives like hers struggle with generating verified and traceable data for impact reporting.     In 2022 Sandra resigned from her role as a Project Country Lead to focus on building ShareCARD—a digital platform to enable community development institutions to have traceable real-time data on how final beneficiaries access their programs timeously and affordably. Her focus in 2023 is to leverage [...]

Phillip’s passion for health literacy and access to healthcare in Uganda, alongside his training in Global Health Policy from the University of Washington, led him to establish the African Health Grid (AHG). This non-profit media organization explores how media can play a role in health advocacy and promotion using storytelling, interactive gaming, and peer learning to involve communities as health defenders.  Phillip identified that many Ugandans lack basic knowledge about health issues, which prevents them from making informed decisions about their health and from demanding quality improvements in health services. Thus, he is focusing on the Health Defenders Program, which engages [...]

Peter is the founder of Reformation Foundation Uganda, an organization that focuses on promoting inclusion for women when it comes to governance. He lives in Kampala, Uganda, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from Makerere Business School.  Peter noticed a lack of inclusion of women in governance and accountability at a local level. His initiative is to support local women leaders in becoming more involved in governance processes, from the village to the district level. The active participation of female leaders is critical in organizing more women around the issue of exclusion, encouraging them to become more active in [...]

Kavuma Kelly Mulungi is a media professional who lives in Kampala, Uganda. They work as a head of finance at Rainbow Africa Initiative (RAI), and a team leader at Rainbow News Uganda (RNU). These platforms provide information, sensitization, and awareness for the LGBTQ+ community and sex workers in Uganda. Beyond repressive laws, the lack of government-collected data renders Queer citizens and sex workers invisible. As a result, policies meant to address specific issues that these citizens face are falling short.   Video and audio stories are used as tools to bring the experiences of these marginalized communities to life for all [...]

Ingrid is a community organizer who lives in Kampala, Uganda. She focuses on grassroots women’s movements, using her experience as a community organizer to assist them with operations and structure development.  “Women in my country face challenges that impact their way of life such as; low or unpaid part-time jobs that pay less and require long working hours to provide for their families, high illiteracy rates, patriarchy, and child marriage.”   Ingrid has also seen how daily survival challenges can hamper social movements. Her focus is on assisting women-led community groups for savings groups. These saving groups allow women to address [...]

Edison is a young community activist, accountability champion, and human rights defender. Based in Buliisa District in Uganda, Edison sees public participation as a catalyst to drive change at a local level.   “I am concerned about the issues in my community. I am part of this community, and I have learned that there is power in taking responsibility as an active citizen. I hope to awaken my fellow community members to take a stand and speak for themselves. In so doing, we can hold our leaders accountable, address injustices, ensure proper service delivery, and the promotion of human rights towards [...]