Who runs Elgon Empowerment?

Currently it’s the ‘4’ Musketeers. Elgon Empowerment has 4 founding trustee’s each leading on a different arm of our charities operations. We’re a mixed matched group of UK professionals, we’re from different walks on life, with different backgrounds, yet we all have one thing in common: we believe we can use the privilege of being residents of the UK to do something good.

Social empowerment means nothing to me, what do you actually do?

To sum it up our purpose is to alleviate poverty in East Africa, using our time, skills and resources to support community led change. It’s the communities driving this work forward, we just give them a helping hand. The principle of ‘social empowerment’ is to help provide people the opportunities and resources they need to improve conditions from the ground up.

What are some examples we what we do?

Facilitate workshops on women’s empowerment & reproductive health.

-We work with local experts who we fund to deliver workshops to our communities. These workshops speak openly about women’s health and collective challenges faced by women, with a key aim to reduce stigma around periods. These workshops provide education on female reproductive health, on menstrual health, and on how to use sanitary products. 

Our ‘SANITARY SUPPLY’ programme - providing thousands of reusable sanitary products

-We work with local suppliers of sanitary products who fulfil our orders. We provide every attendant of our women’s workshops with a reusable sanitary kit. We also do our best to keep community schools stocked with menstrual health products. 

Men’s workshops & men’s groups

-Community leaders have highlighted the difficulties men suffer and how this also impacts women in their households as well as communities more widely. We’re committed to providing a forum for men to talk openly about mental health, their collective challenges to learn about women’s health too.

Where will my donation go?

Let’s talk money. We feel it’s essential that we’re transparent and honest in our work, especially when it comes to funding.

Every penny we receive from fundraising is used to directly support the communities we work with and projects we run. We’re also run solely by volunteers so our overheads incredibly low. However, Non project costs, like the running of our website, albeit small, are met by corporate sponsorship. Costs associated with individual fundraising and costs incurred by individuals, for example travel to Uganda, are voluntarily covered by volunteers.

Currently we fund our work through crowdfunding - it’s groups of awesome people who donate who collectively fund our projects. However, as our work grows, we’ll be working with more small businesses, gain partnerships, and apply for charitable grants. 

At this stage in our organisation, it costs less to use platforms such as GoFundMe and JustGiving, rather than to purchase a dedicated payment function. Whilst every penny we receive from fundraising is indeed used to fund community empowerment, we recognise crowdfunding platforms will take a very small percentage before we see any money. However, this is a cost immeasurably offset by all of the good we’re able to do, facilitated by such platforms.