Unidos Social Innovation Centre was created in 2018 by a group of refugees living in Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda. This settlement is home to around 120,000 refugees from neighbouring countries and cultures, such as Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. Of these 120,000 people, around 14,200 are farmers.
Unidos Social Innovation Centre assembled together to help create livelihood-opportunities and food security in the community, after food rations were drastically reduced for refugees in Uganda.
The organisation seeks to create solutions to some of the big challenges people face: poverty, climate change, war, and political suppression from home countries. All activities are based on inclusive education and empowerment through entrepreneurial skills.
The centre teaches different courses, such as:
While practising permaculture in various external locations, the organisation constructed its own education centre, in 2021.
It has since supported nearly 700 people from Somalia, Congo and Burundi to successfully graduate as farmers in ecological farming.
The organisation is now interested to regenerate the soil through education and demonstrating to thousands of people how to do vermicomposting and its utility to grow more food through being a solution to the infertile soil in Nakivale refugee camp. It also sees the potential of commercially sized worm composting systems, and has constructed one such system near its education Centre in Nakivale
