Nonprofits are important because they fill a role that neither governments nor corporations can. "Corporations almost invariably underinvest in public goods, because they can capture only a small fraction of the rewards," the New Yorker's James Surowiecki wrote recently. "Governments do better at providing public goods (defense, say, or education), but private agendas often derail the public, and governments are far less effective at tackling global problems."

Ugandan women’s rights groups are setting up a control centre to monitor any violence against women in the East African nation’s elections this month and to act quickly on any reports. The move comes after the United States voiced concern that the electoral environment in Uganda was deteriorating in the run-up to the Feb. 18 elections

Recent years have seen a growing academic interest in the migration of MFAs (foreign ministries) to social media. However, the majority of digital diplomacy studies tend to focus on the activities of Western and North American MFAs. This Euro- and American-centric approach fails to recognize the fact that digital diplomacy is now a global phenomenon. 

Young women [in Uganda] there confided in [Diana Sierra]: It was difficult, they said, to go to school while on their periods […] Today, Sierra’s company Be Girl is working to ensure that all girls who want to go to school can—even when they’re menstruating. Be Girl’s underwear and reusable sanitary pads include waterproof pouches that can be stuffed with any absorbent material, like cloth, cotton or toilet paper.

Several years ago, Erin Zaikis was working in rural Thailand. She was surprised to see how many children in the village didn’t wash their hands with soap, much less know what soap was. In 2013 Zaikis founded Sundara, a nonprofit working to improve hygiene and prevent disease in poor communities in India, Uganda and Myanmar by recycling used bars of hotel soap. 

[As a] report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) suggested this summer, when in a ranking the levels of entrepreneurship in 73 nations, they eschewed popularly acknowledged innovation hubs, like Silicon Valley, crowning an unsuspecting Uganda as the world’s most entrepreneurial nation.

An intrepid group of seven Explorer Scouts from the Newbury and Kennet district have just returned from a successful trip to Uganda where they spent 18 days helping to build and refurbish schools in Butagaya and Iwololo. The project was undertaken in partnership with charity Soft Power Education, which works with communities in Uganda to improve their quality of life through education.