How a 4 Person NGO with Zero Funding Changes Lives in Sub-Saharan Africa

From left to right: Godfrey Zaake, Henry Nyanja, Gonzaga Sserufusa, and Philo Namono

While researching volunteer positions around the world —mostly throughout Asia, Africa, and South America — I reached out to over a dozen NGOs. To be honest, during this discovery phase, researching my options, I only had a vague idea of what I was looking for. For those of you who may not know, I have been a licensed CPA since 2015 and have spent the past several years working in the finance department of a B Corp that provides impact consulting services to foundations, corporations, and HNWIs. Accounting and finance are my areas of expertise, and my plan was to volunteer somewhere I could utilize these business skills to support an organization working in a developing country. Perhaps I was a bit overzealous, but I envisioned setting up a project that wouldn’t just temporarily improve the lives of those I was serving during my time volunteering, but one that could sustain long after I was gone. Something Muhammad Yunus would be proud of.

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recommend using Idealist to find volunteer opportunities, both in the U.S. and abroad. Based on my interests, I filtered by issue areas such as Energy, Economic Development, and a few others. Soon enough I was jumping around continent to continent trying to find the right program. I noticed multiple postings from the same organizations, including one based in Uganda called “Community Initiative for Integrated Rural Development.” Try saying that five times fast! For brevity’s sake let’s use the acronym CIIRD. I opened the org’s website and began reading their vision: “We assist people living in marginalized communities whose livelihoods are threatened by socio-economic issues and the impacts of climate change by equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and tools to tackle poverty and disease using local resources.” Again a mouthful, but I was intrigued nonetheless.

CIIRD seemed to be employing a Muhammad Yunus-like approach to addressing challenges being faced in Uganda. I recently finished reading Yunus’ book “Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs” and hoped to put some of his principles into practice while volunteering. In short, Yunus describes social enterprise in terms of the well-known proverb “give a man a fish, and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and feed him for life.” In his book, he explains that social enterprises provide a good or service to certain markets that wouldn’t otherwise have access — whether by introducing new goods and services or by making existing goods and services more affordable for consumers. This appeared to be the philosophy embraced by CIIRD and made the organization very attractive.

CIIRD has three primary programs: Women Empowerment, Green Villages, and Water for Communities. The programs’ metrics are shared on their website, but here are a few highlights:

• Women Empowerment - assisted with the founding of 26 micro-enterprises and trained over 500 women

Mother’s Creations Kasaana — Women Empowerment Program Success Story

• Green Villages - sourced and planted over 40,000 trees in the Lwengo District of Uganda and distributed more than 300 eco-stoves

Trees recently planted by the Green Villages team

• Water for Communities - helped construct 15 rainwater cistern tanks and improved clean water access for 3,800+ people

Residential water tank installed by Water for Communities initiative

Statistics aside, what makes CIIRD’s accomplishments so impressive? Most notably they have leveraged extremely limited resources to achieve serious impact, however, they also utilize a very effective volunteer program.

I applied to CIIRD in late December and to my delight received a response within 24 hours from Godfrey Zaake, the Program Director. We exchanged emails for several days and before I knew it he was asking to set up a video chat for a Saturday at 2 pm Uganda time. Well that’s a few hours before sunrise in DC, so I slithered out of bed the morning of our call and attempted to look presentable for our Skype date.

During our call, Godfrey provided me with a remarkably thorough overview of CIIRD, which recently re-branded under the name Integrated Villages. We talked about some of the many challenges facing people living in rural Uganda and he highlighted some of their most successful initiatives. From listening to Godfrey share stories and facts about his country and local communities, I would’ve guessed that he’d been doing this work for decades. It wasn’t until later that I discovered he’s only 30 years old.

In the future, with his permission of course, I’ll profile Godfrey in more detail. For now, what you should know about this man a half a world away is that he’s incredibly intelligent, charismatic, and genuine. He works full-time for a solar company and founded the NGO as a side project during his college studies. CIIRD was originally registered as a charitable organization in 2014 and Integrated Villages still has virtually zero operating budget. That’s right, they’ve received $0 in private foundation or public grant funding. Their most valuable contribution received to-date might have been the handful of piglets gifted to them that have since been raised and bred. Integrated Villages has been changing lives organically; raising animals and incubating seedlings; bringing community members together to help one another.

Remarkably, the organization charges no fees for any of the goods or services they provide through their programs. Most of the money they’ve taken in over their almost 5-year existence is from volunteers, but here’s the thing: there are no placement fees for any of the volunteer positions. Unlike many other volunteer programs they don’t even require that you fund raise on their behalf, but I’ve taken it upon myself to start a fundraiser to benefit Integrated Villages anyway. Proceeds from this fundraiser will go directly toward funding our solar initiative, which I will outline in greater detail in future posts. You already know I’m a numbers nerd, so it shouldn’t surprise you that I have designed a fairly detailed budget for our project.

I am fully in awe of what Integrated Villages has created with little more than commitment and resourcefulness. I look forward to contributing to the organization and hope to add to the lasting legacy of its passionate volunteers. I’ll leave you for now with a quote from the micro-finance king, Muhammad Yunus: “Once poverty is gone, we’ll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They’ll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society — how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation, and despair.”