A note from David Lukwago, founder of PMA

To work in partnership and in support of a community seeking to transform is a journey. One must empower a community at the local level by building leadership, autonomy, and knowledge. For the community and its partners to learn how to go from a subsistence lifestyle to a progressive and fulfilling one is a longer journey. Not only does every step count, it greatly contributes to the incremental progress of the community members. It is quite often that, in the thick of things, the unfolding vision, ideas, actions and small successes are not captured and the protagonists never have the opportunity to tell their transformative experiences. Therefore, the great lessons and learning are lost along the way, and the primary stakeholders, the community, rarely have a chance to reflect and celebrate their extraordinary success.

This is the background for which docutribe and Cecily Tyler, Founder and Executive Director of docutribe, offered to support Prosper Mama Africa (PMA). She helped them to capture the stories out of the communities with whom they support, but also helped to build media capacity to turn these stories into powerful, transformative and educative scenarios for which other similar communities could benefit.

David Lukwago, Founder of PMA, met Cecily in 2018 while attending her videographic essay research course at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Cecily advised and supported David while he created and launched the 501(c)(3) development branch of PMA in the USA. When David introduced the work of PMA into Uganda’s rural communities, Cecily collaborated with the communities to envision stories of a better tomorrow;  documenting those stories as they were unfolding. She has maintained the role of advisor alongside David and PMA.

This collaboration between docutribe, PMA and the farming communities that has lasted for over 2 years has yielded great results. docutribe has spent a great deal of its time and resources to mentor PMA’s communication team on how to empower the community members. Today, female youth use basic smartphones to take photos and videos at critical steps of the projects thus telling the story of PMA unfolding and building media capacity and storytelling skills throughout the community.

With a donation of tecno smartphones from PMA, for example, one community in Hoima, Western Uganda, has captured the pertinent story elements of the Community Development Pilot Project. This was rewarding and yet only one of the many firsts in this community. From the first meeting between the PMA team and the community, to a wife and husband sitting down to discuss how they should plan their gardens in order to produce crops that could be sold more broadly at market versus providing for one family.

Another first: an extension worker trained women farmers how to prepare a vegetable nursery bed, to a tractor being imported to plough the land versus hand tilling the soil. The community went on to elect their first-ever Leadership Team (headed by a female), and found ways to obtain improved farm inputs: chickens, and bee hives in addition to grains and other traditional agricultural products. The Hoima community has additionally attracted admiring visitors who want to witness and lern from the seemingly immediate transformation; the community is harvesting the best food crops they have ever had. So many firsts!

The community has told its story and captured it on camera to prove it is possible to learn, grow and gain additional support and advocates. It is possible for them to produce results that are helping the community to become more enriched and autonomous. It is the stories created by the community members that PMA is using to take this Community Development Model from one Ugandan Village in 2020 to 9 additional Villages by 2022.

I want to thank Cecily and docutribe for their contribution in using stories to scale Transformative Development models throughout Uganda.

David Lukwago

This requires doing business differently and telling the story to help  all stakeholders maintain engagement. David and his team have  spent the past 3 years building integrated market systems to enable economic growth throughout Uganda and beyond.

• Founder and leader of a medium size communications firm, with more than 15 years of experience.

• Founder and leader of a medium size Agribusiness enterprise, with more than 8years of experience.

• Coordinated social complex projects involving government and multi-donor agencies, and multiple implementing partners.

• Managed multicultural and multiracial mid-sized teams in Uganda, Rwanda and Zambia, overseeing budget planning and execution, contract negotiations and implementations, leading corporate and business strategy, program execution, Logistics, administration, stakeholder management, national and local authority engagements.