About Us

••• Who We Are

A rural development and rights organisation built around community trust.

Rural Smiles Foundation is a community-rooted organisation working to advance inclusive development, rights, and resilience for underserved rural communities. We work with rural women, youth, refugees, girls, widows, persons with disabilities, community leaders, civil society actors, public institutions, and development partners to address barriers that limit access to services, income, information, safety, participation, and opportunity.

Our work responds to the realities faced by communities that are often left furthest behind: weak access to health information, limited digital inclusion, livelihood insecurity, exclusion from decision-making, climate stress, and gaps in clean energy, WASH, and community-based support systems. We believe these challenges are connected, and they require practical solutions shaped with the people most affected.

Rural Smiles Foundation works across five thematic areas: Health and Health Rights, Digital Rights and Internet Freedom, Economic Rights and Empowerment, Social Inclusion and Civic Space, and Renewable Energy and Climate Resilience. Through these areas, we support community empowerment, advocacy, innovation, research, referral pathways, local capacity-building, and sustainable development initiatives.

Our approach is practical and participatory. We listen first, co-design with communities, build local capacity, protect dignity, and support solutions that can be owned and sustained by local actors. With a nationwide mandate in Uganda and a growing coordination presence in Bujumbura Mairie, Burundi, we are building partnerships that connect rural realities to rights-based and community-led development.

••• Mission & Vision

Guided by a clear purpose and a long-term vision for inclusive rural development.

Our mission and vision guide how we design partnerships, engage communities, and build practical solutions that respond to rural realities while advancing rights, inclusion, resilience, and opportunity.

Our Mission

Advancing rights through community empowerment.

To advance health, digital, economic, and environmental rights through community empowerment, advocacy, innovation, research, and sustainable development initiatives that strengthen resilience, inclusion, and opportunities for vulnerable populations.

Our Vision

A society where every person has the opportunity to thrive.

An inclusive, resilient, and sustainable society where all people enjoy their health, digital, economic, environmental, and civic rights and have equal opportunities to thrive.

••• Our Thematic Areas

Integrated solutions for health, rights, livelihoods, civic space, and climate resilience.

Rural Smiles Foundation works through five connected thematic areas. These areas allow us to respond to community realities in a practical and integrated way, rather than treating health, livelihoods, digital access, inclusion, and climate resilience as separate issues.

Health & Health Rights

We support community health awareness, maternal health, SRHR information, menstrual health, disease prevention, health rights education, and stronger access to trusted health information in underserved communities.

Digital Rights & Internet Freedom

We promote digital inclusion, safe internet use, data protection awareness, digital literacy, responsible technology use, and online safety for rural communities and civil society actors.

Economic Rights & Empowerment

We support rural women, youth, widows, refugees, girls, and persons with disabilities to access skills, livelihoods, enterprise support, financial inclusion, and rights awareness.

Social Inclusion & Civic Space

We strengthen community participation, civic space resilience, local dialogue, safe reporting, inclusion of vulnerable groups, and support for human rights defenders and civil society actors.

Renewable Energy & Climate Resilience

We support clean energy access, solar solutions for rural services, WASH awareness, climate resilience, and sustainable community development that helps communities adapt and thrive.

••• How We Work

We listen first, build trust, and design practical solutions with communities.

Rural Smiles Foundation uses a participatory approach that places communities at the centre of design, implementation, learning, and accountability. We work with local leaders, women’s groups, youth networks, health actors, civil society partners, public institutions, and development partners to ensure that interventions respond to real needs and can be sustained locally.

We listen before acting

We begin with community entry, consultations, and local dialogue so that our work reflects the priorities, risks, and ideas of the people most affected.

We co-design with communities and partners

We work with local structures, public institutions, community groups, and civil society actors to shape interventions that are practical, inclusive, and context-aware.

We build local capacity

We support community champions, youth, women leaders, health actors, and local partners through training, mentorship, referrals, digital tools, and practical support.

We protect dignity, safety, and inclusion

We prioritise informed consent, confidentiality, safeguarding, disability inclusion, gender sensitivity, and rights-based practice across our work.

We connect communities to services and opportunity

We strengthen referral pathways, information access, digital safety, livelihood opportunities, local accountability, and partnerships that help communities move from vulnerability to resilience.

We learn, adapt, and scale what works

We use evidence, community feedback, documentation, and partner learning to improve our work and expand approaches that create meaningful change.

••• Where We Work

Rooted in Uganda, growing through regional partnerships in Burundi.

Rural Smiles Foundation works with communities and partners across Uganda and Burundi. Our country presence reflects our commitment to rural communities facing barriers to health, digital inclusion, livelihoods, civic participation, clean energy, and climate resilience.

Uganda

Nationwide mandate with strong rural roots.

Rural Smiles Foundation is headquartered in Kibaale District, Uganda, and holds a nationwide mandate. Our work in Uganda is grounded in rural communities while engaging district, national, and regional partners across our five thematic areas.

We work with rural women, youth, refugees, girls, widows, persons with disabilities, community health actors, civil society actors, local governments, and public institutions to advance inclusive and rights-based development.

Explore Uganda Work

Burundi

Building presence through listening and partnership.

Rural Smiles Foundation maintains a growing coordination presence in Bujumbura Mairie, Burundi. Our Burundi work is currently focused on partnership-building, community listening, and identifying practical areas where our mandate can support rural communities and national development priorities.

Our emerging areas of interest in Burundi include rural livelihoods and economic inclusion, community health and WASH, digital inclusion and data protection awareness, clean energy for rural services, and social inclusion through local participation.

Explore Burundi Work

Across both countries, our approach remains the same: listen first, work through trusted community structures, protect dignity, build local capacity, and support practical solutions that communities can own.