Moses starts his daily journey in the early morning at the fishing site. Upon buying the day’s fish, he smokes it at home and sets off to the road looking for customers. He proudly takes his prepared fish between the doorsteps of his village, Rugarama, until he sells out.  Moses delivers his fish to his [...]

“If anyone who was here years ago comes back now, they would easily spot the change in our lives,” says Salim, a father of seven, as he looks across the room at his wife, Aisha. As a subsistence farmer, Salim and his family have long depended on their home garden for both meals and income. […]

Jackson and his family live in a small home in Bujerenje Village, Kanungu District in Western Uganda. As a rural village, Bujerenje faces numerous barriers to breaking the cycle of ultra-poverty, including challenges with infrastructure and accessible services. Far from the electric grid, households like Jackson’s spend critical income on lighting sources like candles and […]

“I have lived here for over 50 years,” Generoza says. “When I first moved to Rubango, the rainfall was consistent, the land was fertile, and we really loved it here. Today, it is a different story.”  Generoza and her family live in Rubango Village, Kyenjojo District, where the community often struggles with insufficient access to […]

Joyce lives with her husband and four children along the shores of Lake Albert in the Great East African Rift Valley. Like many living in last-mile communities, she and her family experienced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, as government lockdowns caused economic stressors, stressed livelihoods, limited access to markets, and disrupted access to services. […]

In many last-mile communities, access to quality agricultural inputs makes it difficult to harvest high yields. To help ultra-poor communities address this challenge, Raising The Village introduced the seed pass-on methodology, a cost-efficient development approach that is both sustainable and community-building in its approach to ensuring all households have access to quality seed. Bonny Ocen [...]

In Kigezi highlands in Kamuhoozi Village, Rukungiri District, Honesta spreads her bean harvest across a tarpaulin to dry. She begins to shell the  12 kgs of beans she has harvested from the 3 kg of seed received through Raising The Village. The yield is significantly higher than her previous harvests, and Honesta is excited about [...]

For millions of last-mile communities, there are few options when it comes to health services – people are hard to reach and often isolated without access to primary, specialized, and crucial health care services. When rates of COVID-19 began rapidly increasing in Uganda, the one healthcare center in Ndaiga Sub-County in Kagadi District, was overwhelmed, [...]

Jovia was home with her two kids when she felt the contractions. She was in labor and her third baby was ready to arrive in this world. Jovia lives in Bukerahi village, a last-mile community in Kisoro district in south western Uganda. The area is surrounded by hills and crater lakes and the topography of [...]

In many last-mile communities, households often lack access to regulated financial services such as banks and financial institutions, because they are considered “too high risk” or “too difficult” to reach. With limited access to financial services, these last-mile communities have few options when coping with financial emergencies, which can further aggravate and perpetuate the cycle [...]