We Are Changing the Narrative!

At the Zishaye Grassroots Fund (ZGF) Partners Convening in Gulu (May, 2025), more than eighty grassroots changemakers gathered under CivFund’s umbrella to witness and learn from one another’s work. The room was anchored by Albertine’s story, a testament to courage in a region where land is memory, identity, and legacy. With support from a women’s group strengthened through ZGF’s “fund movements, not just projects” approach, Albertine organized women to read land deeds, challenge restrictive customs, and claim dignity.

Her leadership turned seed banks and village circles into classrooms of possibility.

Albertine was later killed by her husband after selling two bulls to support her children, a brutal reminder of the risks women face when asserting agency. Yet her legacy lives on in the gardens, seed banks, and organizing she helped ignite. From Zombo to Lira and beyond, partners shared wins: reclaimed land titles, revived indigenous crops, new income from lemon grass tea and organic inputs, proof that land rights, food sovereignty, and bodily autonomy are inseparable. As CivFund’s Lillian Tamale noted, systems shift because people like Albertine risk everything and movements refuse silence. We left Gulu with more than notes, we left with a flame to carry forward.

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