ABOUT US
Founded in 2007, CAPAIDS Uganda is a nationally registered non‑profit organization to help communities resist, survive and overcome Socio‑Economic and Health Inequities through a community‑centered approach. We work with Community-based Local Heros, self‑help groups and community‑based organizations (CBOs) to deliver education, social protection, livelihoods and Humanitarian response in Uganda’s most marginalized regions.
Our Founding Story
A Story of Hope, Perseverance & Determination
April 13th, 2007, Uganda was still carrying deep wounds. Communities in the north had been shattered by the LRA conflict with an estimate of 1.8 million people displaced at its peak. HIV was still ravaging families and poverty in Lira and Kole and Kampala's margins was not just material, It was a stripping of dignity, of agency, of the belief that things could be different.
Into that reality, a small group of committed people made a decision to stop waiting for solutions to arrive from elsewhere but from within and that is how CAPAIDS was born.
The Friesen Harvey's Home of Hope was established in 2011 with the generous support of the Friesen Harvey family with a physical sanctuary in Boroboro Parish, Lira City where adolescent girls who had survived gender-based violence, HIV/AIDS and displacement could come to heal, learn a skill and rebuild a future.
Seventeen years later, we convene Uganda's Local Leadership Labs with over 200 community-based local actors, coordinate 13 local NGOs and have helped produce Uganda's first community-authored position paper on locally led development. We have presented at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. We have helped rescue 168 children off Kampala's streets.
None of that happened because of donors or strategies alone, It happened because communities believed in it and showed up.
If you want to change a community, you do not send someone in from outside. You build the inside up.
— CAPAIDS Uganda Theory of Change
Our Vision
A Uganda Free from
Socio-Economic &
Health Inequities
And free from all the suffering they bring to communities, this is the Uganda we are working toward, every single day.
Our Mission
Strengthening Communities to Resist, Survive & Overcome
Working in partnership with rural grassroots community-based organisations to build resilience that lasts long after any programme ends.
Our Approach
Rights-Based. Locally-Led. Community-Owned.
We equip women, youth and grassroots leaders with the skills to engage policymakers, demand quality services and shape the systems that govern their lives. We do not work for communities, we work with them.
What We Stand For
Our Core Values
How We Work
Our Theory of Change
Systemic change happens when three things align: people with the skills and agency to act; systems that respond to communities rather than extract from them; and a local civil society strong enough to hold both accountable.
Permanent Presence
Where We Work
We are of the communities we serve, with permanent presence in Uganda's most under-resourced areas.
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Central RegionKampala & Wakiso urban margins where hundreds of thousands are invisible to formal systems
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Lango Sub-RegionLira City, Dokolo & Kole communities still rebuilding from the legacy of LRA displacement
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Karamoja Sub-Region74.2% extreme poverty — the highest in Uganda (UBOS, 2023/24)
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National ReachLocal Leadership Labs spans all sub-regions of Uganda with 14 grassroot co-conveners.
What We have Built
Innovations At Hand
We do not wait for solutions to arrive from elsewhere. We build them here from within communities, with communities.
off Kampala's Streets
in Recent Years
in VSLA Savings 2025
Coalition Accelerator
This story is still
being written.
And you are part of it.
Partner With Us