Economic Empowerment
Resilient Action Organisation (ReRAN) strengthens the economic agency of young mothers and youth through a comprehensive and locally attuned approach. Our first pillar, financial and digital literacy combined with microfinance access, provides interactive training on budgeting, saving, digital payments, record-keeping, and sound financial decision-making. Delivered through our Digital Hub and community outreach centres, this empowers participants to confidently manage both personal and enterprise finances. We also facilitate connections to youth and women’s savings groups, table banking, and microfinance institutions, all tailored to local contexts, mirroring successful models implemented by peer organisations across Uganda.
Our second pillar, skills development and vocational training, focuses on building market-aligned competencies such as tailoring, soap-making, agribusiness, digital skills, arts, and cosmetology. Each training course includes modules on entrepreneurship, marketing, and business planning. This combination has proven to boost non-farm self-employment by between 10% and 30% among women and youth launching home-based micro enterprises. ReRAN enhances this with start-up kits, seed capital, and business coaching, ensuring that learned skills translate into operational income-generating ventures.
Our third approach, group formation and peer support structures, builds both economic and social capital. Participants form savings and loan associations (VSLA/YSLA) or table banking groups, which foster financial discipline, mutual accountability, and pooled resources. Within these groups, peer-led safe spaces address issues such as gender-based violence and emotional wellness, offering coping strategies and psychosocial reinforcement in a collective setting.
The fourth pillar, market access and business incubation, connects trained groups to markets and buyers, enabling collective marketing, cooperative structures, and economies of scale. ReRAN supports budding enterprises with incubation services: start-up kits, mentorship, business pitching forums, and ongoing advisory services. This model follows proven practice in Uganda where incubated youth groups receive seed investment to grow sustainable micro-businesses.
Finally, our fifth pillar, advocacy and policy engagement empowers young mothers and youth as informed decision-makers and civic actors. We collaborate with networks like UWONET to support advocacy for gender-responsive trade policies, equitable resource allocation, and financial inclusion strategies. Additionally, ReRAN conducts workshops on legal rights, RTI awareness, social protection schemes, and gender-responsive budgeting, strengthening participants’ capacity to negotiate and claim their entitlements within their communities and beyond.
Together, these five pillars create a durable pathway: individuals become financially literate and digitally savvy, build viable business skills, gain access to capital and markets, thrive within supportive networks, and step confidently into leadership roles within advocacy spheres. This layered framework shifts participants from dependency to dignity, poverty to productivity, and isolation to resilience.
