About Grassroots Uganda.com            

Note:  You can see our YouTube video here.

Our Vision

Grassroots Uganda was started as a marketing tool to promote income generating activities for impoverished Ugandan women as a way of female empowerment. Grassroots Uganda provides the women with training, supplies, and a market for their products. 100 % of all profits paid to Grassroots Uganda goes back to the village which made the crafts.

Some of our women are HIV+, some live in the war torn north, and some are the only income earners for their families. All are struggling with day to day survival.

Our goal is to provide Ugandan women with the opportunity to help themselves, improve their lives, and the lives of their children. Our goal is to help empower them.

Our Marketing

Grassroots Uganda is a special marketing organization that is dedicated to selling the handicrafts, especially bead jewelry and hand bags, made by five Grassroots Women’s Associations in Uganda. The web site also publicizes the ‘special projects, causes, and needs’ of these same five women’s groups.

Grassroots Uganda was developed and is maintained free of charge so that all monies remitted benefit the women and their families directly.

The five women’s groups (Buvunya, Naggalama, PITWA (Jinja), Namukuma, and Kitgum) each have their own officers, and operate independently, but each receives support, direction and business training from both Grassroots and the oldest women’s group called Pit-tek Women’s Association (PITWA), which is located in Jinja, Uganda.

Our Origins

PITWA was founded in 1995 by Acholi women living in Jinja, but who were originally from Northern Uganda (the North) where a war with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been going on since 1986. The war’s devastating effect on women, children and families from the North inspired the Jinja women to unite to help both the people suffering in the North, and also those from the North who sought safety as internal refugees in the slums of Jinja and other nearby villages.

Grassroots was founded in 2006 by Malcolm Trevena working with PITWA.  Both Grassroots and PITWA believe in empowering the women with all necessary skills so each woman can survive and be independent, and provide for her family’s necessities and education for her children. For the first time in many of the women’s lives, they have the chance to be successful in a small business and receive 100% of the profits from their efforts.