Practical guides
How the work is actually done.
Straightforward guides on the things communities and community organisations ask us about most: giving, saving, water, farming, health, and running an organisation properly.
Savings and livelihoods
- Village savings and loan associations in Uganda: a practical guideA VSLA is a self-managed group of 15 to 25 people who save together weekly, lend to each other from the pooled fund at an agreed interest rate, and share everything out once a year. No bank, no external capital, no loan officer. The group's own savings are the loan fund.
- How to start a savings group: the first six meetingsA savings group needs its rules agreed before any money changes hands. Spend the first two meetings on membership and the constitution, the third electing officers and setting the share value, and only start collecting at the fourth. Groups that collect money first almost always argue later.
- Setting a share value and running the loan fundSet the share value at what your poorest member can pay every week without strain, and allow between one and five shares per meeting so better-off members can save more without excluding anyone. Cap loans at three times a member's own savings.
- Record keeping for savings groupsA savings group needs three records: a passbook per member, a ledger for the group, and a loan register. Every entry is made during the meeting, in front of the member, and the cash is counted aloud at the start and end. Records kept after the meeting are the beginning of every dispute.
- Budgeting when your income is irregularBudgeting advice usually assumes a monthly salary. Most Ugandan households do not have one. The method that works with irregular income is to budget by priority rather than by month: cover the fixed obligations first from every payment received, however small, and treat the rest as variable.
- Starting a small business with group savingsThe businesses that survive in rural Uganda start small, sell something people already buy weekly, and are tested for a month before any loan is taken. Work out your margin per unit and your break-even before you borrow, not after.
- Why women's savings groups change household outcomesWomen's savings groups do more than accumulate money. They create an income a woman controls, a reason to meet weekly outside the home, and a group that notices when a member stops attending. The financial effect and the social effect reinforce each other.
Water and sanitation
- Safe water in rural Uganda: sources, risks and what actually lastsRural Uganda draws water from boreholes, protected springs, shallow wells, rainwater tanks and open sources. Boreholes with hand pumps are the most reliable, but only where a trained committee, a maintenance fund and a spare parts supplier all exist. Without those three, a new borehole is a five-year asset.
- Borehole maintenance: what a water committee needs to knowA hand pump needs weekly inspection, monthly tightening of bolts, and a maintenance fund collected before anything breaks. Most failures are the pump rods, the cylinder seals or the riser pipes, and most are cheap if caught early and expensive if ignored.
- Forming a water user committee that lastsA water user committee needs to be formed before the water point is built, not after. Seven to nine members, at least half women, with named roles, a written constitution, a collection rate agreed by users, and a fund that exists before the first breakdown.
- Treating water at home: which method, and whenBoiling is the most reliable household treatment and needs no supplies beyond fuel. Chlorine is cheaper and protects stored water afterwards. Filters remove sediment and some organisms. Whichever you use, safe storage matters as much as treatment, because most recontamination happens at home.
- Hygiene promotion that actually changes behaviourTelling people that handwashing prevents disease rarely changes what they do. What changes behaviour is putting a working handwashing station where the behaviour must happen, with water and soap present, and making it a visible norm rather than private knowledge.
- Water and sanitation for schools, mosques and health facilitiesInstitutions concentrate both benefit and risk: one water point serves hundreds daily, and one failure affects all of them. Schools need separate latrines for girls with a private washing space, mosques need reliable water for ablution, and both need a named person responsible for daily upkeep.
Agriculture and climate
- Climate-smart agriculture in West Nile: what to change firstThe rains in West Nile have become less predictable, and the practices that cope best are unglamorous: cover the soil, plant on the moisture rather than the calendar, mix crops rather than betting on one, and put trees back into the field. None require money you do not have.
- Coffee farming in Uganda: a starter guide for smallholdersCoffee is a long-term crop: three to four years before meaningful yield, and decades of production if managed. Robusta suits Uganda's lower altitudes, Arabica the highlands. The decisions that matter most are site, spacing, shade and pruning, and they are hard to correct later.
- Cocoa farming in Uganda: what smallholders should knowCocoa needs consistent rainfall, deep soil and shade, which is why it suits parts of western and central Uganda better than the drier north. It takes three to five years to yield, and fermentation after harvest matters as much to the price as anything done in the field.
- Raising seedlings through a dry seasonMost seedling losses in a dry season come from too much sun, too little shade and inconsistent watering, not from the absence of rain. A nursery needs shade, a reliable water source within carrying distance, and someone whose actual job it is to water every day.
- Post-harvest handling: how to stop losing what you grewA large share of what smallholders grow is lost between harvest and sale, to poor drying, bad storage, pests and mould. Drying properly on a raised surface and storing in sealed, dry conditions recovers more income than almost anything done in the field.
- Kitchen gardens: growing what your household actually needs to eatA kitchen garden close to the house, watered with household wastewater, can supply vegetables through most of the year on a very small plot. It works because it is close enough to be tended daily and to be watered with water you have already carried.
- Tree planting and agroforestry on a smallholdingTrees on a farm hold soil, shade crops, provide fodder, fruit and fuel, and can restore nitrogen. The reason smallholders plant fewer than they intend is the gap between planting and benefit, which is best managed by planting a few every season rather than many once.
Health and protection
- Community health in West Nile: what changes outcomesMost of the health burden in rural West Nile comes from preventable conditions: diarrhoeal disease, malaria, respiratory infection, undernutrition and complications in pregnancy. The interventions that shift them are water, hygiene, bed nets, early attendance and nutrition, delivered through structures that already exist.
- HIV prevention: what communities can actually doHIV prevention now rests on a small number of things that work: knowing your status through regular testing, starting and staying on treatment, which makes the virus untransmittable, and reducing stigma so people are willing to test at all. Stigma is the obstacle communities are best placed to remove.
- Hepatitis B in Uganda: testing, vaccination and preventionHepatitis B is a liver infection that often shows no symptoms for years while still causing damage and remaining transmissible. It is preventable by vaccine, detectable by a simple blood test, and manageable with treatment. Testing and vaccination are the two actions that matter.
- Preventing domestic violence: what communities can doDomestic violence is reduced by changing what a community treats as acceptable, not by advising individuals to cope. The measures that work are safe spaces where women can speak, men engaged as participants rather than targets, known referral routes, and leaders who say plainly that it is wrong.
- Supporting orphans and vulnerable children in the communityChildren do best in families, not institutions. Support that keeps a child with extended family, in school and fed is more effective and far cheaper than residential care. The practical priorities are school costs, food, and a named adult who is responsible for that child.
- Child nutrition: the first thousand daysFrom conception to a child's second birthday is when nutrition has the greatest lasting effect. Exclusive breastfeeding for six months, then varied complementary feeding alongside continued breastfeeding, prevents damage that cannot be corrected later.
Running an organisation
- How to start a community organisation in UgandaStart with the problem and the people, not the paperwork. Agree what the organisation exists to do, form a committee, write a constitution, then register at the level that matches your scale: a CBO at the district, or an NGO with the National Bureau for NGOs if you will operate more widely.
- Registering an NGO in Uganda: what the process involvesAn NGO in Uganda is incorporated with the Uganda Registration Services Bureau and then registered with the National Bureau for NGOs, with recommendations from the local council and district. A permit must then be renewed, and annual returns filed. Confirm current requirements and fees with the Bureau directly.
- Writing a constitution for a community organisationA constitution is the document you reach for when there is a disagreement, so it must settle the things people fall out about: who decides, who signs for money, how officers are removed, and what happens to assets if the organisation closes. Write it before you need it.
- Governance basics: boards, committees and keeping trustGovernance is the separation between the people who decide and the people who spend, and between the organisation and any individual. In practice that means a board that meets and keeps minutes, two unrelated signatories, declared conflicts of interest, and officers who can be replaced.
- Bookkeeping for a small community organisationA small organisation needs a cash book, a receipt file, a payment voucher for every disbursement, and a monthly reconciliation against the bank statement. That is enough to satisfy most donors and, more importantly, to prove to your own community that the money was handled properly.
- Writing a funding proposal that gets readFunders reject most proposals in the first page. What survives is a clear problem, evidence you understand it locally, a plan proportionate to your capacity, a budget that adds up, and evidence you have already done something. Write the problem and the budget before the narrative.