A Journey Led by MCLD Uganda champion Baluku Isaya
Article by Baluku Isaya for MCLD’s October 2024 Spotlight on MCLD Uganda members.
YAGANET, the Young Agro-Green Africa Network, represents a powerful movement for community-led development in Kasese, Uganda. Founded in 2016, YAGANET was born from a journey shaped by resilience, community care, and a deep connection to nature and agriculture. This article explores YAGANET’s transformative journey, its impact, and its vision for sustainable and inclusive development in Uganda.
Founding Roots and Vision
Baluku grew up in the border village of Kanyatsi in Kasese District, witnessing firsthand the struggles his mother faced as a widow vending local pancakes to pay fees for her 9 children. Driven by a commitment to uplift his community, the founder pursued education through hard work, balancing evening classes and day survival business of vending yellow bananas, G-nuts and women’s clothing to afford part of university tuition. This early perseverance not only influenced his career but also planted the seeds for YAGANET’s mission: to create a platform where young people and women, initiate, own, and effectively lead climate-resilient enterprises that promote equality, build communities and transform lives.
YAGANET envisions empowered and resilient young people-led sustainable transformation.
YAGANET initially focused on addressing financial inequalities and creating opportunities for young people and women. Through interventions in climate-resilient agribusiness, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship, YAGANET equips marginalized groups with tools to thrive in their communities. Today, YAGANET envisions empowered youth as agents of sustainable development, addressing climate change and economic resilience from within.
Evolution and Impact Over the Past Two Years
In the last two years, YAGANET has expanded from a mix of programs to only two core program pillars:
Climate Justice Agribusiness (CJA); The CJA program promotes community-led initiatives to address climate change impacts on agriculture, enhancing food security and fostering sustainable development. This program supports persons with disabilities, smallholder young farmers, and underserved communities in Kasese and the Rwenzori subregion. Through CJA, YAGANET has provided climate-adaptive technologies to 100 PWD households, planted 100,000 trees in schools, organized disaster relief, and strengthened over 30 women and youth savings groups. Over 2,000 individuals received financial literacy training, and 284 reusable menstrual kits were distributed to vulnerable teenage girls with disabilities affected by disasters in Kasese. Despite these successes, YAGANET faces challenges such as limited funding for water storage, cooking stoves for PWDs, and indigenous tree seedlings, as well as financial and gender-based constraints hindering economic inclusion.
Mentorship and Green Skills Innovation Development (MGID); MGID programs empower young people and women with essential green skills innovations, fostering resilience against climate challenges and enhancing employability and entrepreneurial capabilities. Primarily targeting young people and women from disadvantaged backgrounds, through this program 11,155 individuals have been empowered in climate-smart entrepreneurship, agribusiness, and value-added processing.
Progressing through Challenges
YAGANET’s approach has reshaped community dynamics. Initially, some community members anticipated direct financial support, but they now embrace YAGANET’s philosophy of self-reliance. Today, the community actively identifies and implements solutions for sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation. Through small savings groups, YAGANET has empowered women and young people to establish savings and loans associations, that provide loans without collateral requirements. Successful community ventures include Beekeeping, art and handcrafts, baking of various food items, soap-making workshops and bamboo tree value addition, showcasing the power of collective ownership and action.
Community success stories:
Blessed Weavers YAGANET Group; This is a group of grassroots youths and women from Kasese municipality who transitioned from individual peasantry work to a cohesive team after attending a YAGANET boot camp. They participated in the Omwoleso market, significantly boosting their sales, earning 500,000 UGX in June, this year, up from just 10,000 UGX weekly before their training in May. Despite challenges like material shortages and the lack of a meeting space, they increased their group savings from 5,000 UGX in May to 200,000 UGX and have built a supportive community. The group now aspires to become known for producing high-quality, locally-made products and to export them to larger markets outside Kasese.
Rwenzori Shoemakers, a group of youths began their journey with YAGANET’s Boot Camps program. Inspired by the YAGANET-supported project, they acquired shoe-making skills. With a small financial facilitation boost from YAGANET, they pooled their resources to establish a small craft shoe workshop. Now, they serve as community trainers and save their earnings from conducting craft training sessions for YAGANET. Their growing success has made them community role models, inspiring other young people. Despite challenges like financial instability, high competition, and costly materials, they aim to expand their workshop and empower more youth.
YAGANET’s Future Vision for Community-Led Development
At YAGANET we envision a future where community-led development addresses systemic challenges in Uganda. The journey of sustainable transformation begins with empowering individuals to recognize their potential and act collectively. YAGANET aims to expand this model across the Rwenzori region and beyond, involving communities in identifying issues, creating strategies, and implementing their own innovative solutions, a model that promotes ownership, accountability, and resilience.
Key Advice for Aspiring Community Leaders
For those new to community-led development, these insights are essential:
- Follow Your Passion for effective change arises from a genuine desire to uplift communities, not personal gain.
- Engage Community Members as Partners since Sustainable development succeeds when communities are integral to initiatives.
- Nurture a Positive Mindset because a resilient outlook transforms challenges into growth opportunities.
A Proud Collaboration with MCLD
Joining MCLD’s Uganda chapter marked a pivotal moment for YAGANET. MCLD helped refocus YAGANET’s strategy on engaging community members in project implementation and strategic planning. With MCLD’s support, YAGANET has continued to document and advocate for inclusive access to nutrition and WASH practices, particularly among persons with disabilities.
YAGANET’s Ongoing Journey of Community-Led Development
YAGANET’s journey highlights the transformative power of community-led development. Under the founder’s leadership, YAGANET demonstrates that true change comes from within. Through program interventions in climate justice agribusiness, green skill innovation development, and advocacy, YAGANET enables youth and women to break free from dependency cycles and build sustainable livelihoods. With support from MCLD and a belief in community-centered approaches, YAGANET is set to inspire more Ugandans toward resilience, sustainability, and self-reliance.