WomenGro Initiative

WomenGro Initiative is a women led, community driven non-profit organization based in Uganda dedicated to advancing inclusive and sustainable livelihood opportunities for women, youth and persons with disabilities living in marginalized communities through sustainable urban agriculture, digital literacy and income generation activities. WomenGro Initiative was born not from board room but from lived experience of Lilian Nakigozi, the Founder. At a young age of 8, Lilian and her family lived in Katanga slum, which is home to approximately 20,000 people. Life in the slums is usually not easy with the majority of occupants living in houses made of mud, wood, and those lucky in brick-made houses. This is worsened by environmental pollution in their surroundings that often leads to contamination of surface and groundwater, ecosystem degradation, soil pollution as well as emission of greenhouse gasses. Having been raised solely by her mother in a family of nine siblings, Nakigozi would see her mother work extra hard to feed them. Getting food on the table was a challenge and this contributed to the death of her younger sister. These experiences influenced her to have an ambition of changing the lives of urban slum dwellers and marginalized groups when an adult.Today, WomenGro Initiative supports women, teenage mothers and persons with disabilities living in underserved communities in Uganda. The organization addresses the urgent and deep rooted challenges of food insecurity, poverty and climate vulnerability. Across Uganda, economic vulnerability remains widespread with around 42% of Uganda’ population still living in extreme poverty. This means households still lack access to essential services like food, education and healthcare. Even today, only half of Uganda’ population (25 million people) are considered food secure. These conditions aren’t just statistics, they translate into real life daily hardships that millions of women across Uganda still face and struggle to feed their families and generate reliable income. WomenGro Initiative addresses these challenges through an integrated solution where we equip women, youth and persons with disabilities with practical training and build adaptive climate-resilient vertical farms using cost-effective, eco-friendly and innovative material that use less space and water for crop production with low carbon foot print. Our organization model builds supportive networks that allow women to share skills. develop self-sustaining food for their families and overcome poverty through reliable urban agriculture to create resilient and sustainable communities. Women work together in groups of 10-30 people which helps to them to gain confidence and develop support systems among themselves. Inclusion is central to our work, we intentionally design programs that are accessible to persons with disabilities and amplify leadership and voices of women and young people. Our programs are designed with the community, ensuring dignity, participation and ownership.. WomenGro Initiative prioritizes underserved urban and peri-urban settlements amplifying their voices that are often excluded from development processes and decision making. Uganda. Today, WomenGro Initiative has reached over 10,000 people across the target areas of Kampala, Wakiso and Luweero.. Over the past years, we have transitioned communities into eco-villages and supported women to create home gardens and community demonstration gardens where women walk in to learn and practice sustainable agriculture The community gardens now serve as hubs for educational activities, workshops and events related to sustainable agriculture. We focus on empowering women with skills because we believe women's involvement in sustainable agriculture practices has greatly contributed to a positive impact on gender equality and social development. We empower them to become leaders of change in their communities and contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Another key initiative that we embarked in recent years, was to empower mothers with maternal and child nutrition education, which is essential for ensuring the health and development of both mothers and their children. Through our nutrition education programs for young teenage mothers, we reached 3000 mothers with this education and this helped to increase awareness and understanding of key nutrition concepts such as the importance of breastfeeding, the need for a balanced diet, and the value of locally produced fresh food. Mothers who participated in the program report feeling more confident in their ability to provide health nutritious meals for their families and have seen improvements in their children' health and development.
Currently, we are organizing community training programs in sustainable agriculture practices as an excellent way to promote sustainable and environmentally-friendly food production and increasing access to equal opportunities for women to improve their livelihoods in poor settlements. We educate community members on the best practices for growing food in impossible places, including using environmentally-friendly techniques, reducing waste and promote biodiversity. We have also integrated digital literacy for women into our programs.

Going forward, we will introduce online training programs for women and public schools in Uganda to promote sustainable food systems and we hope to scale to other Africa countries starting with East Africa, Kenya & Rwanda. We are currently seeking for supporters and allies to support us on our journey towards ending hunger, poverty and climate vulnerability.