Founded in 2017, UCAA was the first organisation established to advocate for inclusion of the most vulnerable groups of people in Uganda with specific focus on LGBTQ+ people, Women and Persons Living With Disabilities (PWDs).
This was after the realization that LGBTQ+ people, Women and PWDs in Uganda are deprived of their human rights and treated unfairly in our communities, using religion as a justification.
Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) seems to be subjectively understood by a reasonable number of the Ugandan citizenry. However, there is still lack of a deeper understanding of the concept and its applicability in the day-to- day real life. Ugandan society rather continues to be divided and eaten up by discrimination of different groups of people basing on their differences.Different groups of people continue to be pushed to the margins especially LGBT+ persons, Women and Persons Living with Disabilities. Consequently, this has costed our society balanced opinions, views, inspired creativity, and innovation that would have enabled a more positive and healthier human experience. It has also fueled economic crisis and Human rights abuse and violations for instance against LGBT+ persons in Uganda.
Whilst this is happening, there is and has been no or very limited participation and involvement of a highly influencing sect (Religion) which on the other hand is both theoretically and practically driven by the principles of equality and love for all. Proven by the most recent population census in 2014, Uganda is a religiously diverse country with 84% of the population subscribing to Christianity, 14% to Muslim and 2% to traditional and other beliefs. This implies that Religion has influence on 98% of the population.
UCAA work to combine religion with LGBTQ+ people, Women and PWDs, create mutual understanding and break the taboos.
At the institutional level, the implementation of the programs has been punctuated by a number of institutional developments such as; the development of the five-year Strategic Plan (2019 -2023) -which is the first consolidated Strategic Plan in its history. The Coalition has an active Board of Directors in place, which among others has adopted and operationalized key organisational policies which guide operations of the coalition. Lastly, there is a gradual increase in the income being raised by the coalition, which is also a promising indicator of the increasing partnership portfolio.
