Echoes of Hope:
Community Peace Champions in Busoga Region
Location: Bugweri District, Busoga Region, Eastern Uganda
Project Period: July – December 2025
Implemented by: Wilmat Development Foundation (WDF Uganda)
Supported By: Peace Direct /PSH
The Challenge: A Community on the Edge
Uganda’s electoral seasons have historically been accompanied by a shadow that many communities know too well — rising tensions, violent party primaries, and the fracturing of trust between neighbours who once stood side by side. In Bugweri District, located in the heart of the Busoga Region, 2025 was no different. With the 2026 general elections approaching, the air was thick with political pressure, divisive messaging, and the lingering trauma of previous cycles of election-related violence — wounds that fall disproportionately on women, youth, and those with the least power to protect themselves.
It was in this environment that Wilmat Development Foundation (WDF Uganda) launched the Echoes of Hope for Community Peace Champions in Busoga Region project. The conviction was clear: lasting peace cannot be imported from outside a community. It must be grown from within — cultivated by the very people who live, breathe, and belong to that community every day. With that conviction as its foundation, WDF Uganda set out to identify, train, and strengthen 50 grassroots peace champions across Bugweri District, equipping them to lead from where they stood.
“Elections should be an exercise in democracy, not a season of fear. We wanted communities to own that truth — and to act on it.”— WDF Uganda Programme Team · Busoga Region, 2025
Who We Reached — and Why It Mattered
The project deliberately drew its peace champions from three distinct groups within the community — 20 youth, 20 women, and 10 faith leaders — recognising that durable peace requires buy-in across generations, genders, and belief systems. Youth, often targeted for political mobilisation and manipulation, became agents of counter-narrative instead. Women, who typically bear the heaviest burden of conflict’s aftermath, stepped into roles as mediators and healers. Faith leaders, whose voices carry weight in homes and congregations across Bugweri, became messengers of non-violence in the spaces where they hold greatest influence.
Together, these 50 individuals did not simply receive training — they became a network. A living infrastructure of peacebuilding capacity embedded in the very fabric of community life in Bugweri District, capable of responding to tensions as they emerged, before they escalated into harm.
Three Activities. Thirteen Sessions. Real Change.
Capacity-Strengthening Workshops for Peace Champions
Fifty community peace champions — youth, women, and faith leaders — participated in five structured workshops covering early warning and reporting systems, community-led conflict resolution, peace building principles, and the power of photo-voicing as advocacy. Champions left equipped not just with knowledge, but with practical tools to prevent and de-escalate conflict in real time.
5 Sessions DeliveredTrauma-Healing Sessions for Women Affected by Political Violence
Twenty women who had experienced or witnessed election-related violence came together in five carefully facilitated trauma-healing fora. Using experiential sharing, problem-tree analysis, HARBA methodology, and women-led healing circles, these sessions created safe, supportive spaces for women to process their experiences, rebuild emotional resilience, and reclaim their voices as peacebuilders in their own right.
5 Sessions DeliveredCommunity Unity Events — Art, Sport & Dialogue
Three community events brought Bugweri District alive with a different kind of energy — one of unity, creativity, and shared humanity. Participants were identified, onboarded, and sensitised before coming together for art-based advocacy activities and sports tournaments across football, netball, and volleyball. These events broke down the walls that divisive rhetoric had built, creating space for dialogue and reminding communities that they had far more in common than the political season wanted them to believe.
3 Sessions DeliveredWhat Changed in Bugweri District
By the close of the project in December 2025, the Echoes of Hope initiative had delivered measurable, meaningful change across Bugweri District. The outcomes confirmed what WDF Uganda has always believed: when communities are given the right support, they do not just survive difficult seasons — they grow through them.
- 50 empowered peace champions actively leading non-violent conflict resolution and election awareness initiatives in their communities — continuing their work independently beyond the project period.
- 20 women supported through structured trauma-healing sessions emerged with improved emotional well-being, stronger social bonds, and renewed confidence to participate in community peacebuilding processes.
- Strengthened community cohesion across diverse political, religious, and generational lines — with participants reporting increased trust and improved communication between previously divided groups.
- A culture of non-violence actively promoted through art-based advocacy and sports tournaments that reached audiences far beyond the 50 direct champions, creating ripple effects of dialogue and mutual respect throughout Bugweri District.
- A community early warning network established — peace champions trained in early warning and reporting now serve as first responders to emerging tensions, enabling faster, community-led de-escalation before situations spiral.
- Faith leaders integrated as pillars of peace — with 10 faith leaders now equipped and engaged as active promoters of non-violence within their congregations and broader spheres of influence.
“Before the training, I did not know what to do when neighbours started fighting over political parties. Now I have tools. I have words. I have confidence. I can help.”— Youth Peace Champion · Bugweri District, Busoga Region
The People Behind the Project
“The trauma sessions gave me a space I never had before — to say what happened to me, and to hear that I was not alone. For the first time, I felt strong enough to go back to my community and say: we do not have to live in fear.”
— A woman participant · Trauma-Healing Sessions, Bugweri District“In my congregation, people were divided — supporting different parties and refusing to speak to each other. After the training, I was able to bring them together and remind them that we are one community first, and political supporters second.”
— A Faith Leader Peace Champion · Bugweri District“The sports tournament was the first time in months that young people from different political sides played together. Nobody talked about parties on that day. We just played, laughed, and remembered we are neighbours.”
— A Youth Peace Champion · Community Unity Event, Busoga RegionWhat the Echoes of Hope Project Taught Us
Insights that will shape WDF Uganda’s future peacebuilding work
- Community ownership is the strongest predictor of sustainability. Champions who were selected by and from within their own communities demonstrated deeper commitment and longer-lasting impact than those recruited through external processes.
- Women must be centred, not added. Placing women at the core of both trauma healing and active peacebuilding — not as an afterthought but as central architects — produced the most significant shifts in community dynamics and trust.
- Art and sport break barriers that words cannot. Some of the most powerful moments of reconciliation in Bugweri District happened not in a training room, but on a football pitch and in the space created by creative expression.
- Faith leaders are a force multiplier for peace. Their access to community members across political divides — and their moral authority — makes them uniquely effective peacebuilding partners who should be engaged earlier in future programmes.
- Trauma must be addressed before transformation can happen. The trauma-healing component was not supplementary to the peacebuilding work — it was foundational. Communities carrying unresolved trauma cannot build peace sustainably until that trauma is acknowledged and processed.
Echoes That Will Last Beyond 2025
The Echoes of Hope project has come to an end but its echoes have not. In Bugweri District, 50 community peace champions continue to show up at community gatherings, mediate local disputes and carry the message of non-violence into the political season that Uganda is now entering. The women who sat in trauma-healing circles in 2025 are now among the most vocal and committed advocates for peaceful elections in their villages. The faith leaders who participated are still preaching unity from their pulpits and in their community meetings.
As an Organization, we are very proud of what this project achieved and committed to building on it. The 2026 elections will test the resilience of the peacebuilding infrastructure that has been established in Bugweri. We are confident that the champions, the networks and the culture of non-violence that Echoes of Hope planted will hold. And we remain dedicated to supporting communities across Uganda in navigating this critical period with dignity, dialogue and hope.
Because peace is not a destination. It is a daily practice and in Bugweri District, 50 community champions are practicing it every single day.
Echoes of Hope — A Project Completed, A Movement Begun
Thank you to every champion who chose peace. 💙To the 50 peace champions of Bugweri District, to the 20 women who found healing and reclaimed their voices, to the faith leaders who opened their congregations to dialogue and to every member of the Busoga community who showed up — this work belongs to you.
You proved that ordinary people, given the right support, can do extraordinary things for peace.
The WDF Uganda Team