Tag: human relationships
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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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Dignity over Aid: The Requirements of a fairer and more inclusive approach to humanitarianism
In 2015, Cohere, which was then called Xavier Project, went to Kakuma refugee camp for the first time as part of a consortium delivering ed-tech homework solutions for refugees. The product, designed by an ed-tech company in Nairobi, was a set of homework quizzes on the Kenyan curriculum that ran on basic handsets through USSD…
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Agency, Inclusion and Trust-Based Relationships: a Triangle for a Just Society
The message we hear most often from the communities we work with is that the goal is not simply to escape poverty, insecurity or hardship in times of crisis. People seek justice, the dignity that comes from being treated as fully human, and the agency to shape their own futures rather than having them shaped…
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Refugees Leading Their Own Change: What I Witnessed in West Nile
When I first heard that we would travel to West Nile region of Uganda to visit refugee-led organisations (RLOs) in Bidibidi, Imvepi, Rhino Camp settlements and Arua, I was excited. It was my first time visiting that part of Uganda, and I could not wait to experience a different environment and meet communities hosting thousands…
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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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Education Under Strain: Displaced Children and Local Efforts to Sustain Learning in South Sudan
In a temporary classroom made of iron sheets, wooden poles, and bare ground, South Sudanese returnees, internally displaced children, and Sudanese refugee learners sit quietly, focused on their teacher. They are determined to learn with passion and curiosity despite the harsh environment surrounding them. Yet today, hundreds of these learners remain at risk of dropping…
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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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In Pursuit of Inclusion Through Relationships
“When partnerships are described as rooted in in-person relationships, or even friendships built over years of shared work, they are often treated as unprofessional. Formal calls for proposals, legally binding contracts, audits, and controls are assumed to be more objective. Through this lens, language around building relationships can seem informal or suspicious.” In part one…