Bagwere tribe’s Safe
Neighbourhood approach


In March 2011, Jonathan Dudding visited the Safe Neighbourhood Foundation (SNF) based in Budaka, near Mbale, in the east of Uganda. The purpose of the visit was threefold - to review the progress made after the Village Volunteer sponsored strategic planning event in 2010; to visit the water and sanitation project in the local community funded by the Charles Hayward Foundation; and to deepen the relationship between ICA:UK and its partner SNF.

“Safe Neighbourhood” is the English version of “Omulirano Omusa”, the traditional approach to communal ownership and use of land among the traditional Bagwere tribe of Budaka district. It describes a community in harmony both with itself and its environment, and extends to practical notions of working together, supporting each other and developing and sharing skills and resources to ensure that each family has enough food to eat and more stored in the local granaries to be consumed during dry seasons or drought. The concept is peculiar to the Bagwere and remains attractive and relevant to them as an approach to eradicating poverty, and as a way of coping with a changing

world. Over the past few years, for example, the community has experienced a climate change from two rainy seasons per year to just one, with all the challenges and changes that brings. It is this concept that lies at the heart of SNF’s approach, and a key reason why it is able to have the impact it is having.