Tag: funding
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What I Learned from Community-Led Organisations in West Nile
In April 2026, I travelled through the West Nile region of Uganda to meet organisations working within refugee and host communities. We visited many organisations involved in livelihoods, education, peacebuilding, climate action and community protection. Before the visit, I knew that community-led organisations were doing important work. What became clearer to me during the journey…
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Community-Led Early Learning in West Nile Uganda
What happens if overcrowded Early Childhood Development (ECD) schools had access to well-resourced reading clubs and if local organisations received sustained funding to expand their supplementary learning programmes? The truth is, most ECD schools in refugee settings across Uganda’s West Nile region are nowhere close to that reality. Overcrowding undermines the quality of learning and…
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Leadership, Land and Belonging
Regenerative agriculture in refugee settings is often presented as a pathway to sustainability and renewal. Refugee-led organisations are already demonstrating what this can look like in practice. But these examples also raise a deeper question: if regeneration depends on long-term relationships to land, what happens when the people doing the work are not fully allowed…
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Help Without Organisation
How can help be channelled? Should humanitarian aid flow only through an organisation? We (Joseph, Adhiambo, and Jovial) recently spent 10 days travelling through Kampala and southwest Uganda, listening to refugee leaders and having very interesting conversations about how to truly listen to the community and understand the community’s needs. One of our heated discussions…
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True Allyship Doesn’t Ask for Compromise
In December 2025 I spent five days in Geneva talking to refugee advocates, donors, intermediary organisations and others about funding refugee leadership. Cohere has been able to channel funding to over 100 refugee led organisations in the last decade and it is often assumed that Cohere’s goal is to get as much funding to refugee…
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Advocating for us without us (Refugee Voices)
By Jenny Basika and Emmanuel Arika Samuel Refugee-led organisations are struggling for recognition, because when we talk about marginalisation in the sector it’s not always about funding but also trust and recognition. Refugee-led groups are often questioned for their capacity and accountability and a lot of mistrust on their core values and being talked about…
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Voices from the Ground: What a Refugee Barber Told Me That No Donor Ever Has
In this second episode of Voices from the Ground, I return to Nakivale refugee settlement; not with a survey tool, but with curiosity, time, and a willingness to listen. What I encountered wasn’t in reports or logframes, but in quiet, unfiltered conversations with refugees. I had returned to Nakivale in Isingiro District, Western Uganda, as…
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Voices from the Ground: When Visibility Replaces Value
In this episode of Voices from the Ground, I explore what it really means to be close to the community; and how trust-building and human relationships can reveal truths that reports and project metrics often miss. Recently, I spent time with a group of refugee women leaders in Rwamwanja settlement. I didn’t go with an…
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The Crisis of Humanitarian Partnerships
Lately, I have found myself in countless conversations and sector convenings where the same question keeps surfacing: “Why are partnerships with refugee-led organisations (RLOs) still tokenistic and only pursued when INGOs face funding cuts or operational challenges?” Across the humanitarian sector, the narrative is becoming familiar: RLOs are called upon only when costs need to…
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Refugee-Led Innovation in Education
How RLOs in Kakuma Are Reimagining Learning In the heart of Turkana County, in Kakuma refugee camp, where survival is shaped by scarcity and resilience, a quiet but radical transformation is underway. It isn’t led by international agencies or headquartered strategies. It’s being shaped by Refugee-Led Organisations (RLOs) that are not waiting for permission to…