CARE International Uganda, has scheduled a national launch of both Catalyzing Strengthened policy Action for Healthy Diets and Resilience (CASCADE) and Deliver Women’s Economic Resilience through Enterprise and Markets Systems (DREAMS) projects.
The launch of these projects will take place on the 26th of July 2026 at Mestil Hotel Kampala targeting selected national and sub-national stakeholders including MDAs, CSOs, development partners, and donor representatives.
CARE Uganda and Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is implementing Catalyzing Strengthened Policy Action for Healthy Diets and Resilience (CASCADE) a five-year project funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
CASCADE, is a10 million Euros project aiming at improving food security and reducing malnutrition in Uganda, particularly in regions of Acholi, Tooro, Karamoja, Lango, and Busoga, targeting One million women of reproductive age 15 to 46 years and children below the age of five years in Uganda.
Speaking to journalists, Immaculate Daisy Yossa- consortium manager -CASCADE at CARE International In Uganda said that this project kicked off last year on 1st June 2022 and they hope to implement the project till 31st December 2026 with Kyambogo University Department of Nutrition Science and Dietetics as their research partners.
While speaking about food safety, she said Uganda is a weak implementer of food and nutrition policies.
“As a country from time to time, Uganda has been recognised and applauded for having excellent policies but when it comes to implementation of these policies, we have fallen short. The enforcement is still a huge gap related to that in the monitoring of these policies.” She said.
In addition, CARE International in Uganda in conjunction with the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development has embarked on the implementation of Deliver Women’s Economic Resilience through Enterprise and Markets Systems (DREAMS) a three-year project with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
DREAMS is a three-year women’s economic empowerment project with a USD 4.5 million budget, that aims at strengthening the economic resilience of 340,00/ women in Uganda through gender transformative women’s economic empowerment policies, enterprise growth, and accessible market.
This project particularly targets women working in rural areas, self-employed women dealing in small businesses and young urban hustlers in two regions, Northern Uganda and SouthWestern Uganda.
According to Edton Babu, the project manager DREAMS Care Uganda, this project will provide technical assistance to existing Parish Development Model(PDM) and Generating Growth Opportunities and Productivity for Women Entrepreneurs(GROW) programs to become gender transformative and embed tested enterprise growth, financial and digital inclusion models.
“As a project, we do not have the capacity to be in the whole country but we are going to be in the whole country through GROW because it has the capacity to be in the whole country by looking at models, testing them, and rolling out.” Edton Babu said.
Mr. Babu told journalists that last year they had a project called National Policy regulatory programme support with the Minister of Gender supporting Uganda Women Intrapreneurs programme and they discovered that there were so many challenges, even when the government was putting a lot of money in businesses to grow, including some financial institutions that demand a man’s signature before a woman takes a loan
“Through National Policy Regulatory and Program Support(NPRPS), we learned that it’s very important to begin working on an enabling environment for women to thrive in business so we began by collecting data in 75 districts, we collected data on women collectives, and created the first ever database on women. We also did a cost analysis baseline survey and created a management information system for Ministry of Gender to be able to manage the money that was coming in. So all those lessons emerged into the DREAMS project, whose aim is to strengthen the economic resilience of 340,000 women through gender transformative, women economic empowerment, empowerment policy, enterprise growth, and accessible markets.” He said
Connie Kekihembo, the Executive Director of Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association Limited (UWEAL) said they will do the enterprise skills development with these women.
“We will connect them to markets because you will have a couple of networks that we already have established. We are known as an Information Centre for ensuring that women can be linked where the opportunities are. We are also working with a multiplicity of financial institutions that we think will be prepared and linked them to financing. We will mentor them for the experience we have we have a couple of women who have gone through a number of businesses and they have learnt” she said
