Stories of change

Four women. Four records of what changed.

Names are withheld where safety asks for it; details are not invented. Each account follows a real path through our groups cooperatives, safe spaces, health rounds and savings books.

A cooperative member presenting graded coffee and groundnuts at a produce table

Agribusiness · Eastern Uganda · Rice growers

A cooperative chair in Bulambuli

“Before, the middleman named the price at the garden gate. Now we name it together at the store.”

She keeps the group’s records in a counter book: acres planted, kilos milled, advances repaid. When the rice project grouped 100-plus women’s groups toward collective marketing and a local processing plant, her book became a bargaining position. The paddy that once left the village in sacks now leaves as milled rice carrying the cooperative’s name into the negotiation.

Four women at a Women Grow Uganda training event

Single mothers · Sironko · Tailoring cohort

A young mother back at the machine

“The machine does not ask me why I left school. It only asks whether I came to practise.”

She joined a safe space expecting counselling and found a treadle machine as well. Vocational training, peer support and back-to-school advocacy are designed to run together because income without confidence does not hold, and confidence without income does not feed a child. Her first paid order was six school uniforms for neighbours’ children.

Women Grow Uganda field staff with a farmer during a village visit

Health · Pakwach · Village health

A health promoter on foot

“I do not carry medicine. I carry the part before medicine clean hands, clean water, early action.”

Trained from within her own village, she moves compound to compound with a demonstration tippy-tap, menstrual hygiene guidance and nutrition counselling. It is unglamorous work measured in things that do not happen: the diarrhoea that stays away, the girl who does not miss school that week.

Women turning beans on a drying tarp after harvest

Savings · West Nile · SACCO network

A savings group that became a buyer

“We started by saving for emergencies. We continued because we could buy together.”

The Village Savings and Credit Association began with small weekly contributions and strict rules. Two cycles later the same discipline buys inputs in bulk, hires a truck together on market day, and negotiates with suppliers the group once bought from singly. Micro-credit, in this telling, is not a loan product. It is neighbours underwriting each other.

Have a story we should hear carefully?

We document good practice with consent, anonymity where needed, and drafts shown back before anything is shared.

Share in confidence