Breaking the cycle
How Girls Empowering Girls cash kept them in school
When nineteen-year-old Masiga Gift Naome speaks about her past, the sad memories overwhelm her. Her voice falters. Tears roll down her cheeks. The hardest year, she says, was 2017, the year her father died and left seven children behind, and a mother who was grieving, overwhelmed, and unsure how to keep the family afloat.
Life did not simply change. It collapsed.
Each day followed the same routine. Gift would wake up early, sweep the compound, wash what needed washing, and sit for hours with nothing to do. When she could, she fried and sold ‘daddies’, to mean small snacks, to earn a little money for food or school supplies. “That life was very hard for me,” she says. “We were struggling to exist.”
In Kampala’s low-income neighborhoods, that cliff edge is familiar. A death in the family or a lost job can tilt a home from ‘managing’ into hunger, debt, and interrupted schooling.
Then, in 2019, something shifted.
Gift was selected to join the pilot of the ‘Girls Empowering Girls’ (GEG) programme (Cohort 1), an urban social protection programme launched by the Government of Uganda led by Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), in partnership with UNICEF and with funding from the Government of Belgium.
“The positive change came when I joined Girls Empowering Girls,” she says. “I started going for mentorship sessions. I started getting some funds. Slowly, life started moving.”
The change was not instant. It came in small steps, repeated over months. Through regular mentorship sessions, Gift began to say what had happened to her family and what it meant to be a girl navigating adolescence without a safety net. She learned about her health, her rights, and how to protect herself from violence. “They taught us that we can exist in society without violence,” she says. “That we can talk. That we matter.”
The programme also provided cash support, quarterly remittances of UShs.160,000 (US$44.2) for primary school pupils and UShs.240,000 (US$69.4) for secondary school students. Gift used part of it to buy school requirements and part to expand the small shop business she ran with her mother. “I invested it in baking and the shop,” she explains. “That is how I managed to continue with life up to here.”
Today, the difference is visible not only in what Gift says, but in how she says it. “One thing I can do now is talk confidently,” she says. “I can speak anytime I want. I am not afraid anymore.” This is attributed to her participation in the GEG programme funded by the Belgium Government.
When mentors first met her, Gift was quiet and withdrawn, recalls Ochen Linda, an assistant monitoring and evaluation officer with Uganda Youth Development Link, one of the organizations implementing the Belgium-funded GEG programme. “It was very hard to get words out of her,” Linda says. “She had very little self-esteem.”
The design of ‘Girls Empowering Girls’ is deliberately close to home. The programme works through peer mentors, young women drawn from the same communities as the girls they support. “It means the girls can reach their mentors anytime,” Linda explains. “They live in the same community. They understand.”
Over time, Gift began to stand out differently. “She became more visible during the innovation sessions,” Linda says, describing a part of the programme that supports girls to identify problems around them and design practical solutions.
The opportunities widened. Gift received training in digital skills, learning how to use a computer, prepare documents, and protect herself online. She later recorded an online interview largely on her own.
Crucially, Gift returned to school. She completed her secondary education and is now waiting to take her next step. She hopes to join a women-in-technology programme and dreams of becoming an orthopaedic specialist. “Five years from now,” she says, “I see myself working in a very good hospital.”
Gift is one girl. But she is not an exception.
Launched in 2019, Girls Empowering Girls began with a simple goal: to make sure adolescent girls in Kampala do not fall through the cracks as they grow up. Designed as Uganda’s first urban social protection programme for girls, it focuses on those both in and out of school.
The programme works across Kampala’s five divisions: Nakawa, Central, Makindye, Rubaga, and Kawempe.
The programme has reached 4,150 adolescent girls, including girls with disabilities, urban refugees, and pregnant or teenage mothers.
Even when the programme formally ends in 2026, its architects say the relationships will not. “Communication with our beneficiaries will continue,” Linda says.
If she could speak directly to the donors, Gift would keep it simple. “Some of us would not be here without your support,” she says. “We would not be this confident. We would not believe we are becoming something better.”
How Namukasa found stability, school and hope
In Kyebando Nsooba, a few kilometres from Gift’s home in Banda B, Nakawa, east of the capital, Kampala, another story of quiet endurance unfolds.
Gladys Namukasa, now in Senior Three at Gayaza Church of Uganda Secondary School, learnt early what it meant to survive with so little. She is the youngest of four children raised by a single mother, Esther Nakiggwe, 45. Her father is alive, but absent in every way that matters. Gladys says she has never met him, never known his voice.
School was never stable. Esther Nakiggwe, 45, remembers her daughter drifting in and out of classrooms through most of her primary years, rarely finishing full term. Fees went unpaid.
Then came eviction. The small house they had been calling home was taken from them. A good Samaritan offered shelter: a narrow warehouse once used as a dumping ground for unwanted timber and discarded items. It had no lockable door. When it rained, water poured through the roof.
“It was very hard,” Esther says. “We had no room, no privacy, no way to keep things safe. Gladys could not study there.”
The disruption pushed Gladys out of school. What started as a temporary break turned into two years away from class. Then Esther fell seriously ill. Unable to move, she depended on her daughter once more. Gladys called her aunt for help and began selling cassava to raise money. “When my mum came back from the hospital, she found me selling cassava,” Gladys says. “The little money I got helped to treat her.”
When Gladys finally returned to school. Fees were still a problem. Sometimes she stayed home, afraid she would be sent away again. “I started performing poorly,” she says. “I got fed up with studying.”
Diana Kamwada, a peer mentor, says, “Before joining the Girls Empowering Girls programme in 2019, Gladys’ schooling was very unstable… Paying school fees consistently was simply not possible.”
“There were times when Gladys would attend school for a few days a week,” Diana continues. “Most days she stayed at home…” The turning point came when Gladys was selected for the GEG social protection programme. “When I first met Gladys, she had completely given up on education,” Diana says. “We started working with her through regular mentorship sessions while also engaging her mother through parental mentoring and financial guidance.”
The cash support steadied the household. It helped pay school fees and basic needs, and it gave Esther space to plan. Gladys stopped missing class. “I started loving studying again,” she says. In 2026, Gladys will be joining Senior 4.
Gladys’ mother, Esther Nakiggwe, saved part of the money and used the rest to buy basic hairdressing supplies. Slowly, she opened a small salon at Africa Hall in Makerere University. At first, it was just a chair and her hands. “Clients would come, and we would plait hair for small amounts,” she says.
Today, ‘God Is Good Beauty Salon’ is fully established at Africa Hall, Makerere University in Kampala. The income keeps Gladys in school and has given her new skills too. She learned hairdressing and earns pocket money by styling classmates’ hair. During holidays, she works alongside her mother. “I feel proud working with my mummy,” Gladys says.
Mentorship rebuilt Gladys’s confidence. She now supports other girls facing similar struggles. At school, she offers encouragement. At church, she sings in the choir and sometimes speaks in front of the congregation. “I can stand up and talk now,” she says. Gladys is preparing for Senior Four.
