Communities for Development is a small charity that operates in Eastern Uganda, Bulambuli. It provides the training and support entrepreneurs in rural Uganda need to develop or save businesses and to build thriving communities. Their aim is to enable the rural community of Bulambuli to reach financial independence and build their own future. In 2020, the charity needed to raise funds to keep their activity going, and also to bring awareness to this very much unknown part of the world: Bulambuli, Uganda.

It’s common knowledge all around the world that “money makes money”: the rich are getting richer by investing in each other's ventures, while they ignore smaller, poor entrepreneurs. That's why people from Bulambuli, a small rural community in Eastern Uganda, who needed urgent investments, decided to hijack this well known truth by pretending to be filthy rich.

If our system encourages investing in rich people, people who already made it, then the community of Bulambuli was ready to fake it until they make it.... In order to transmit this idea in a powerful and insightful way we used classic hip-hop, obviously.

This year, in order to raise awareness about the district of Bulambuli as well as raise funds, we faced an unexpected challenge: the sanitary crisis. With Communities for Development not being a sanitary charity, but a financial one, we needed something that felt different. In order to stand out, we chose a fun and provocative approach that would make people happy to donate and interact with. Instead of making a classic fundraising campaign our aim was to create empathy between the community and the ‘donors’.

A 100% Ugandan production.

In order to not only help the rural community but also to boost the awareness of local artists, we decided to work only with musicians and directors from Uganda.

The music video was directed and produced by Wakaliwood Studios, the B-Movie Uganda based film studio, which is well-known for ultra-low budget films like “Who killed captain Alex?”. The original song was created by Ugandan rap artists: Mc Yallah, Big Ben and Jora Mc, some of whom also come from the Bulambuli region, singing in English, Luganda and Lugisu, the local dialect of Bulambuli.

We also created remixes with artists from all around the world (Berlin,Tokyo, L.A, Amsterdam, San Francisco) in different music styles in order to widen our audience.

The campaign has gained awareness from all around the world, being featured in more than 30 top media outlets including BBC News, The Guardian, Vice or El País.

Even if this was the worst year ever to create awareness and get funding for small charities that are not operating in the health sector, our results were very positive, enabling Communities for Development to keep operating in the area and raising over $25,000. Money that will help more than 200 families receive formations and grow their business. This way the local community of Bulambuli gets one step closer to fighting poverty and reaching financial independence.