By David Kawanuka Naggenda | Founder and Director
Started on the 31st of May 2022, LEGIBE- Girls' Empowerment and Education, aims at empowering vulnerable girls and teenage mothers around the shores of Lake Victoria, through Education and Health, to save them from sexual and labor exploitation.
We aim to achieve this through our program activities which the community girls fully engage in. These include;
- Mental Health Sessions:
Many of our community girls are victims of attrocities like; rape, sexual abuse, family discrimination agaist the girl child, domestic violence, poverty, HIV/AIDS etc. All these give them stories and issues to tell.
We always organize mental health sessions where girls sit and share their stories and issues. We invite counsellors and some international therapist friends who conduct online mental health workshops with the girls. Through these sessions, girls are counselled, stregthened and taught their rights which has given them a confident voice to move on well with life, and forget all what happened to them in the past. This has helped them restore their lost hope, as one of the girls "Aisha, 18" has this to say:
My name is Aisha Babirye. I'm 17 years old and a student in form 2. I'm a member of Let the Girl Be-Uganda(LEGIBE). I'm an orphan, having only my mother, who is a devoted born-again christian. Because of her devotion to God, she took me to a church pastor who promised and committed himself to take me back to school, after I had spent a whole year without going to school due to lack of school tuition.
I was mistreated, and I was the only one doing all the house hold cores like, fetching water and firewood, cooking, washing utensils and clothes, plus looking after the young siblings, yet there were other girls and boys with whom we would be working together!
Unfortunately, whenever I could report this to my mother, she couldn't believe me as she was a devoted christian, she over trusted the pastor.
When I left the pastor's home, I joined Let the Girl Be-Uganda, and at first I was afraid to share my story but after hearing what other girls in the group shared, I got the courage to share mine too.
At eighteen, I look too big to be in form two, but all this doesn't scare me anymore as I know what I want and it's my life
Thanks to our mental health session where I have gained courage and strength to continue with my life despite all what happened in the past.
- Sewing and Knitting
I'm happy to report to our donors, partners, friends and well wishers, that in May of this year, we received the sewing tools we applied for, from "Tools With A Mission (TWAM)", a UK charity that donates tools.
These tools boosted our sewing training project where girls are now having all what they need in training. More girls from our community have picked interest to register.
We hired a professional trainer to train the girls so that they can acquire good sewing skills that can help them to make good items for sale to earn a living.
- Music, Dance, and Drama (MDD)
The girls' music, dance, and drama team is doing great! Recently, on the 31st of May, 2026, they made a wonderful performance to mark our organization's 4th birthday celebration, where they showed all what we've achieved in the four years of our existence, and how our work has helped them develop.
Among the achivements, is their ability to sew some simple items like cloth bags, shirts and dresses for children, and also to knit very good items like scarves, crochet caps, sweaters, etc.
Also, through our music, dance, and drama performances, we continue to create awareness on some important community challenges after identifying them through our community outreach research. For example, the girls' MDD team, makes play performances demonstrating these challenges and how they can be delt with. In our recent performances, we've touched much on the need to keep our environment clean through proper sanitation and hygiene.
- Community Outreach
Through our community outreach program, we work hand in hand with community members especially community leaders, to see to it that our goal to empower vulnerable girls and teenage mothers is achieved. We always visit different villages in our community, especially where we identify they still have members who believe that girls are only prepared for marriage and house hold work, and hence deny them an opportunty to acquire a genuine formal education. We educate them the importance of educating the girl child too, by sighting some good example of women in our community, nation and the world, who have contributed a lot to their societies.
These awareness workshops in the community have contributed the following impact:
- Increased number of girls attending school
- Reduced number of girls dropping out of school
- Teenage mothers going back to school
- Reduced number of teenage mothers in our community
- Reduced number of teenage girls working in bars, sexual workers, and in stone quarries.
With the wonderful support of our donors, partners, friends and well-wishers, we promise to work hard and faithfully, with commitment to put each and every dollor donated to our project, to its purpose.
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