The opportunity Cate nearly missed and how it changed everything

Cate Nabankema walks carefully across the uneven ground at Christian Youth Missionary Group in Kinawataka, Kampala, moving with the caution of someone who knows how deceptive the terrain is. From a distance, she is instantly recognisable, yet there is an evident transformation. The young girl captured in past photographs has grown into a woman who carries herself with the composed assurance of a leader, one who has acquired a quiet confidence that tells you that she knows what she is about. 

Around her, children in their large numbers, are playing, screaming out instructions to each other. It is holiday time, so it is an expected sight. Cate later points out that these large numbers of children playing this early in the day is the same number even when schools are open. The children do not go to school. The reasons are painfully simple: families cannot afford basic scholastic materials. Pens, pencils, exercise books, small items that stand between a child and a decent future. For Cate, this reality is not theoretical. It is a painful memory.

“There were days I could not go to school because we did not have money for these things,” she says. “If someone gave you even one exercise book, you felt like you could dream again.”

Raised by a single mother caring for several children, Cate grew up with a sense of how fragile opportunity can be. She frantically searches for a handkerchief from her bag to wipe tears that came quickly when the conversation pivoted to her early years. “

“My mother used to tell me, ‘Stay focused, Cate!’ When something is yours, it will come and I have held on to that.”

Her first taste of community service came after Senior Six, when she volunteered as a peer educator at a local health centre. The young people she met, their honesty, confusion, and vulnerability, taught her how much a child needs a safe person to talk to. She wanted to be that person.

On 20 November 2019, Cate served as UNICEF Uganda’s Country Representative for World Children’s Day, shadowing Dr. Doreen Mulenga and taking part in calls and staff meetings.

World Children’s Day is the anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. On WCD, UNICEF and partners highlight children's issues and support young people's engagement.

Cate almost turned down the opportunity.

“I was just 18. I was scared. I did not think I could do it.”

But she went, and in a boardroom filled with decision‑makers, she made a plea that even now, captures her approach to leadership: “Stop speaking for children, involve us.”

The following morning, her story appeared in national newspapers. Relatives called, her mother cried. Cate had stepped through a door that continues to open new paths for her and the communities she serves. After that experience, Cate joined Network for Active Citizens, working in neighbourhoods like Kinawataka, Kisalosalo, Kimwanyi, Kanyanya, and Port Bell. She walked in with the humility of someone keenly aware of the cultural, social, and economic weight carried by the people she hoped to support.

One of the first community leaders she met was Paul, the now 35-year-old team leader of the Christian Youth Missionary Group, a community organisation that has served Kinawataka since 2008. He describes this place from his years working within: “Kinawataka is one of the toughest slums in Kampala. Poor waste disposal. No jobs. Most families survive on one meal. Many children do not go to school.” During the COVID‑19 lockdown, hunger moved Paul’s team to transform a garbage dumping site into a small demonstration garden where families could learn simple urban farming techniques. The idea was practical: grow vegetables in small spaces using buckets, sacks, old tyres and recycled containers. Cate came along while the project was still in its early struggling phase. 

“She helped us organise,” Paul says. “She would meet us, sit with us, listen, and guide. She kept us on track. She made sure we got the training we needed. She pushed for us to get partnerships, but most importantly, she showed up consistently.”

Cate’s work becomes even clearer when seen through the lives of the women in the community, women whose daily resilience is often invisible. There is Sylvia, who is 31 years old, raising her six-year-old daughter while supporting her own mother and five siblings. She runs a small stall selling ‘katogo’ (beans and maize) on Robert Mugabe Road.

“It feeds my whole family,” she says. “All seven of us.”

She credits the entrepreneurship training from the Network of Active Citizens, where Cate was part of the facilitation team, for giving her the confidence and skills to start her own business.

“When I do not understand something, Cate explains it in a way that I understand. She sees me when others cannot see me. If more young mothers can learn business, they will not depend on anyone.”

And then there is Faridah, a 17-year-old single mother. Her daughter is 6 months old. She sits at her small wooden stall selling tomatoes and onions while her baby lies on a mat beside her.

“I may never go back to school,” she says matter-of-factly. “But I want my baby to have the opportunities I will never have. She must go to school.”

She has received basic business training through community programmes, but she needs more. More support, more skills, more chances. What she wishes for her child is what Cate longed for when she was a child. This is where Cate spends her days. In communities like this one in Kinawataka, with a small but functional urban garden providing vegetables for families and giving them a sense of dignity, a makeshift learning shelter offering textbooks, seats, and free internet for revising and downloading notes, a mushroom-growing room training refugee girls from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a makeshift room with a black soldier fly project run by youth producing sustainable livestock feed.

This place has become an ecosystem where learning, skills, and hope intersect, a small youth city built on collaboration. Cate is proud of what they do here. “I don’t want another child to lose hope because of something small,” she says. Her dreams for the future include her own organisation dedicated to ensuring children access education – fees, books, uniforms, pads, everything that keeps a child in class – and a master’s degree to strengthen her leadership and expand her work.

In a reflective exchange with Dr Robin Nandy, the UNICEF Representative to Uganda, Cate clarified that her most fragile moment came after Senior Six, when she almost failed to make it to university because she lacked tuition. The dream she had worked toward for years seemed to slip away until a good Samaritan stepped in and paid her fees. That intervention did more than fund her education, she explained. It restored her belief that someone could see her potential and invest in it. When she once urged leaders to stop speaking for children and involve them, it was shaped by that lived experience of nearly being left behind and then being lifted by timely support.

Dr Nandy encouraged Cate to consciously use her journey as a platform for mentorship and positive influence, commending her for the steady work she is doing in Kinawataka and in Kawempe, where she grew up. Cate reflected that the hardest leadership lesson in community work has been learning that impact requires patience, credibility, and consistent presence. In environments where opportunities are scarce and trust must be earned, showing up repeatedly matters more than rhetoric. 

Looking ahead ten years, "I see myself leading a fully fledged organisation that removes practical barriers to education for vulnerable children, while advancing my studies to strengthen my ability to influence systems and expand opportunity for others", she says.