We started CAPABLE to give families the opportunity to drastically improve their circumstances: generating enough income so that every member of their household could live above the extreme poverty line. We have consistently achieved this goal, and our impact has increased with each new two-year cohort.
In 2022 we launched Cohort Three, expanded to a new district, and started working with South Sudanese refugees. Despite doubling in size and facing a myriad of challenges, our team of 60 here in Uganda continued to raise the bar of what’s possible in rural economic development.
Over the next five years, we have plans to reach 75,000 individuals through our core programs and many more through our rapidly growing cooperative network.
As we look forward we remain committed to radical transparency and continual improvement. Thanks for supporting us on this journey.
Apwoyo matek,
The foundation of our work is mindset change. Our clients point to the shift from "I can't" to "I can" as the most vital step on their path out of extreme poverty. That’s why we will always prioritize individual, family, and community counseling alongside economic development.
Onen Musa was our client during 2020-2021, and he describes his present reality as "Yama kuta." It's a slang term that essentially means "a cool breeze," like the one when your mom blows on a cut when you're a kid or the one that comes under the mango tree on a hot day right before the rain.
Musa is one of thousands who have created the best possible future for their families. He has built a house, his five kids are in boarding school, and he’s diversified his income through farming and small business. Most importantly, he now enjoys peace and harmony in his home. Yama kuta.
Local knowledge and local expertise inspired us to design a model contextualized to where we work. With decades of experience working in the region and sector, our Ugandan leadership team is the best in the business.
Northern Uganda is the poorest region in the country and is impacted by many challenges: unpredictable growing seasons due to climate change, unpredictable markets due to global instability, and a refugee crisis along the northern border.
We work in some of the most remote parts of this region not because it’s easy, but because it’s where we can have the most impact. The Acholi people consistently inspire us with their creativity and grit.
Asset based development delivers results because it’s built on the resources available in a given context. In our context, clients have access to an abundance of land and labor, which is why we partner with them to grow their farming capacity as step one on their journey out of extreme poverty.
We partner with subsistence farmers living on less than $0.50 / day. Our goal is to see our clients transition to commercial farming, diversify their income, and consistently live above the extreme poverty line. We operate a two-year, high-touch program that provides intensive training, one-on-one mentorship, individualized counseling, low-cost financing, and market linkage. These comprehensive services meet the unique needs of each member in our rural communities of 30 households
Our belief in interdependent outcomes, drives us to partner with our clients to address their well-being from an economic, physical, emotional, psychological and social perspective. Our program relies heavily on mentorship and counseling to ensure that clients can heal from trauma and develop the resilience required to remain out of poverty. After two years, clients transition into formal farming cooperatives and open up membership to the wider community.
We prioritized the impartiality and precision of this report, which is why we collaborated with a local firm. The analysis was conducted by professors from Gulu University who assessed the impact of every Cohort, past and present, as well as a comparable peer group.
We used the most up-to-date PPP (purchasing power parity) conversion rate for income data and we winsorized all data to remove outliers.
Additionally, while calculating averages, we used the actual number of dependents in each household (average family size: 7.2) instead of using the “standard” household size (average family size: 4.8) which could potentially inflate our impact.
Three years after completing the program, Cohort One's income remains over 8 times higher than when they initially enrolled. However, it has fallen below our outcome goal by 13%. Back in 2018 we did not realize how important cooperatives would be to the durability of our impact. A week of training on cooperatives towards the end of the program was insufficient to address the challenges posed by the global pandemic and extreme inflation in Uganda. We’ve learned alot in the subsequent years and now devote the last 6 months of the program to training on cooperative registration, management, participation, and strategy. The impact of these adjustments are reflected in Cohort Two’s outcomes below.
Cohort Two marked another significant step forward for us. We nearly tripled the size of our program and improved our key outcomes. We're happy to report that during their first year out of the program they continued earning well above the extreme poverty line. This is a direct result of the health and stability of their cooperatives.
Since our first Cohort in 2018, we have learned a great deal. We are now reaching five times more people and we have expanded to a new district that includes 20% South Sudanese refugees. Despite these changes, Cohort Three has increased their income at a faster rate than any previous cohort.
By working closely with the people and the land, our 100% Ugandan team relies on their local knowledge and leverages their expertise to equip our Clients with what they need to thrive.
We drive towards one goal: seeing every member of every household exit poverty, as defined by the World Bank, for good. We rigorously measure our outcomes and adjust our activities to reach this goal.
We deploy technology, including tablet based data collection, GPS crop mapping and live impact dashboards.
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When we launch Cohort Four in 2024-2025, we’ll increase from 1,200 families to 3,000. This will give over 21,000 people the opportunity to exit extreme poverty. With Cohort Five in 2026-2027 we’ll increase again to 6,000 families and their 42,000 household members.
We invest deeply into a community over two years. But it’s no accident that we call our core program the Capable Cooperative Accelerator. After two years, groups transition into formal farming cooperatives.
This is where the catalytic nature of our approach takes off: community members that did not participate in our program begin joining cooperatives started by those who did. This creates new opportunities for communities to access markets, receive support, and change their circumstances.
The economic impact is substantial: new cooperative members are earning significantly more than their peers.
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In 2022 we saw a real-time ROI of 213%. Our clients earned $3.48 million as a result of our $1.11 million investment.
We’ve reduced our cost per individual by 60% over the last five years. We’ve proven that we can improve our impact while we scale and we have no plans to slow down.
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