🌍 Empowering Communities Through Education, Healthcare, and Sustainable Change
In the heart of Mbarara, in southwestern Uganda, there is an extraordinary place called the Agandi Foundation. Since 2017, in a modest rented house, children who have lost everything – their homes, families, and sense of security – have been finding shelter. Some were abandoned on the streets, others were given up by desperate mothers who no longer had the strength or means to care for them.
In Agandii always live between 25 and 30 children, ranging in age from infants to teenagers. The Agandi Foundation not only provides them with shelter, food, care, and education, but also gives them what is most important – a sense that they are wanted, that someone cares about them, and that they have a chance for a future.
It is one of the few organizations in Uganda that successfully conducts national adoption processes and ensures that children return to their biological families – if there is even the slightest hope that the home from which the child ended up on the street can become safe.
Some children return to their mothers who have managed to find work and place to live. Others return to their grandmothers who, with the right support, can create a real home for their grandchildren. Each of these stories is proof that help makes sense – but only when it reaches the right people.
✨ The first child we supported was Abigail – a girl who, thanks to our long-term care and the involvement of the local community, was eventually adopted by a university professor from Kampala.
Today, we support Agnes – a quiet, incredibly resilient girl who was reunited with her loving but impoverished grandmother. Thanks to our help, she now attends school, has meals every day, and lives in a safe, brick home instead of a makeshift tent.
These are not just stories of survival. They are stories of rebuilding childhood, dignity, and hope – step by step.
🤲 Who creates Agandi?
Behind it all stands Ania – a Polish woman who has lived in Uganda for many years and understands its everyday reality inside out. She is a wife to a Ugandan man, a mother, a caregiver, and a committed social activist.
Every day, she cooks for the children, finds doctors, speaks with families, arranges adoptions, and builds support systems for single mothers.
Over time, Ania came to a deeper understanding: that true help can’t stop at rescuing children – it must begin long before they’re abandoned or taken in. That’s why Agandi is now creating more than a children’s home. It’s building a village – a safe, sustainable community that gives hope before harm ever happens.
🏡 The Village of Hope
On a newly purchased piece of land, nestled among banana plantations, the Agandi Foundation is building something truly special – a safe space for children and for single mothers who once needed help themselves. These are women who have faced extreme hardship: abandoned by their families, survivors of violence, poverty, or unsupported motherhood.
Many are young girls who became pregnant as teenagers, often as a result of rape, or were left by their partners – especially when complications arose during childbirth or when a child was born with a disability. With no support and nowhere to go, they ended up on the streets with their babies.
At Agandi, they learn to sew, gain skills, and slowly rebuild their lives. Some of them – those who naturally connect with children and thrive in a caregiving environment – will have the opportunity to live in newly built homes or apartments with their own children, while also becoming caregivers to orphaned children who cannot return to their biological families or are awaiting adoption.
“When we invest in women and girls, we are investing in the people who invest in everyone else.”
— Melinda Gates
This model is inspired by the concept of children’s villages – a proven approach used for over 30 years in Poland and across Europe.
Instead of institutional care, it creates small, family-style homes that reflect everyday Ugandan life: home-cooked meals, familiar routines, affection, and a sense of belonging.
Why is this important? Because children raised in institutions often struggle to reintegrate into the realities of their own communities. They are prepared for a life that doesn’t exist – not the one that surrounds them. Agandi wants to change that.
It’s building a community that grows together, learns together, and rises from poverty together – giving children not only care, but a true sense of home.
Current stage of construction, main house.
🌱 Sowing the Future Together
As the Empathy Institute Foundation, we are honored to be part of this journey – not as visitors, but as long-term partners. This is not one-time aid. It’s a lasting commitment built on trust, shared values, and real relationships.
We share resources, tell their stories, and support both individual children and long-term goals – from education to the creation of the first children’s village in Uganda.
🤝 We warmly invite our partners and supporters to co-create this vision: to help build the children’s village and explore current projects that urgently need funding. Because it’s in places like this that the future truly begins.
Not for show. Not for the photo. But for real.
Project 1 – First Unit in the Village of Hope
👩🏾👧🏾💔 The story of Bridget and her daughter Desire
In August 2023, we were once again confronted with the harsh reality of girls’ lives in Uganda. A tiny infant, weighing less than a kilogram, arrived at the Agandi orphanage. The exhausted and neglected baby was the size of a human hand.
The child’s mother, a teenage girl named Bridget, was placed under her uncle’s care after the early death of her parents. From the age of four, he was her legal guardian. Before her sixteenth birthday, she endured unimaginable suffering – she was raped and subsequently became pregnant. Her uncle forced her to live with the child’s father, who abused Bridget physically and emotionally. Due to brutal beatings and her dire health condition, she went into premature labor and was thrown out of the house. Her uncle offered to help the young girl, but on one condition: that she give up her child, Desire – something the mother could not do. Desperate, homeless, and penniless, she was spotted in tears by a motorcycle driver, who brought them to us.
We took Desire to the hospital immediately. Whe was tiny and weak, she began to steadily gain weight. Meanwhile, Bridget finally received what she had lacked her entire life: the sense that she was not alone.
Today, they are together. Desire is growing, and Bridget is learning a trade, taking steps toward regaining her independence.
Their story highlights one important truth: there are many other mothers and children in Uganda in similar situations. They all need the same thing – a safe home where they won’t have to choose between love and survival.
🏡👣 That is why we are creating the Village!
The story of Bridget and her little daughter Desire shows us one thing clearly: there must be safe places where mothers will never have to be separated from their children.
In Uganda, many young girls face an impossible choice – to give their baby away to an overcrowded institution, or to watch both of them suffer from hunger and homelessness. No child should grow up without a mother’s love. And no mother should have to choose between love and survival.
That is why we began building the Village of Hope in Agandi. We bought the land, and the walls and roof are already in place. This was a huge step forward. But today we are stuck – without further support, we cannot continue.
🏡🧱 Our goal now
👉 To renovate, finish and provide basic equipment for the first of four housing units.
Cost: approx. 30,000 USD
This amount will cover:
📍 plastering and flooring,
📍 stairs and tiles,
📍 window security bars,
📍 plumbing and drainage,
📍 a basic kitchen with a brick countertop,
📍 simple electrical installation,
📍 basic furnishings: beds, mattresses, tables, chairs, cupboards, mosquito nets, and simple kitchen utensils.
It is safety that mothers like Bridget and children like Desire need to start anew.
Once completed, this unit will become a home for several families. Children will finally have the chance to grow up with their mothers, and mothers will gain the time and peace they need to learn new skills and build independence.
Every donation, no matter how small, is a building block in completing what we have already begun.
Together, we can open the doors of the Village of Hope.
Project 2 – Tuk Tuk
Every morning in Agandi begins with the same question: how to get to school, how to bring food or water?
Some children walk several kilometres on foot every day. Others rely on local drivers. This solution, however, is costly and, above all, not always safe or reliable.
Ania, who looks after the children in Agandi, tries to drive them herself as often as possible. But with so many responsibilities – from daily shopping to urgent hospital visits – she is not always available. Then the children who go to school from the home are left with a difficult choice: a long walk on foot or risky transport with strangers.
That is why a tuk-tuk with a trailer is so desperately needed in Agandi. This small but reliable vehicle will transform everyday life for the entire community.
🚐🛞 Our goal now
👉 Purchase of a tuk-tuk with a trailer.
Cost: approx. 4,000 USD
This amount covers:
📍 purchase of the vehicle and trailer,
📍 basic equipment: protective cover, storage boxes, simple tools.
👩🏿👧🏿💪🏿 How it will help
✅ Safe and quick transport for children to school every day
✅ An end to risky and expensive rides with local drivers
✅ Transport of food, crops and water
✅ Carrying of firewood
✅ Real support for Ania, who until now has tried to manage everything on her own
This is not just a vehicle. It is time, safety and relief for mothers, children and for those who today carry all the responsibilities on their shoulders.
Every kilometre driven means more strength for learning, more time for work and more hope for the future.
Together, we can make the Village of Hope truly move forward.
Project 3 – The Well and Food Gardens in the Village of Hope
Water and food are the two greatest challenges of daily life in Uganda. During the dry season every drop is precious. Mothers with children often walk many kilometres just to bring back a few jerrycans of water. They are the ones who literally carry the weight of the day on their shoulders.
Without a well, access to water is always uncertain and requires long, exhausting journeys. Without food gardens, all supplies must come from outside. A well and gardens will not completely eliminate the need to buy food, but they will greatly reduce dependence, bring more stability and – most importantly – allow children and mothers to learn self-reliance adapted to life in Uganda.
💧🌱 Our goal now
👉 To build a deep well and establish fenced food gardens.
Cost: approx. 8,000 USD
Deep well – 6,500 USD
Food gardens with fencing – 1,500 USD
This amount covers:
📍drilling and equipping the well with a pump,
📍bringing water directly to the village,
📍fencing and preparing the land for cultivation,
📍plumbing and drainage
📍a basic kitchen with a brick countertop
📍basic tools and seeds.
👩🏿👧🏿💪🏿 How it will help
✅ Constant and safe access to water during the dry season
✅ Healthy food from our own crops
✅ Education for children and mothers – learning how to cultivate land, plan, manage harvests and prepare meals
✅ Self-reliance adapted to the realities of life in Uganda
✅ Strengthening the entire community – children and mothers, by gaining knowledge, will be able to teach and support other families
✅ Greater stability and security for the Village
This is not just infrastructure.
It is a school of life in practice – a place where children learn how to combine school education with daily responsibilities, and where mothers acquire the skills needed to live independently.
Every drop of water from the well and every fruit from the garden is not only survival for today, but also a lesson for the future – a lesson of responsibility, care for the community, and passing knowledge on to the next generations.
Together, we can make the Village of Hope a place that offers not only safety, but also the strength to shape an entire community.