Photo credit: African Argument
Some 8,100 South Sudanese refugees in Uganda have had their hopes of escaping from poverty dashed.
The NPR Network reports that they were enrolled into a program called, Graduating to Resilience Scale Activity. After the program they we4re supposed to be given a $200 sum for each participant and coaching to start a new business.
The US government had awarded a $15 million grant to the nonprofit group AVDI Foundation to set up what’s known as a “Graduation Approach” program to serve the refugee and host communities. The projection was that in three years, the participants would have graduated from extreme poverty and become self-supporting.
Apart from the refugee households, some 3,500 Ugandans living in extreme poverty near the settlement were to participate. The arrival of so many refugees has been a strain for the locals as they have had to share limited land, water, and firewood resources with refugees. While the refugees can get some help from aid agencies, locals are often excluded. AVSI’s program aimed to bridge some of the gap.
However, in February 2025 the grant to AVSI was cancelled, as part of the overhaul of foreign aid set in motion by the Trump administration. b
AVSI was founded in Italy in 1972 as the Association of Volunteers in International Service. The nonprofit had to lay off 140 local staff hired for the project, according to Rita Larok, the director of programs. The participants also had to be informed.
The participants had seen the project as their only way to becoming self-sufficient. The disappointment of the lost opportunity has reverberated through the settlement and local towns.
