About CECI Uganda
Community Empowerment for Creative Innovation (CECI Uganda) is a refugee-led, regional non-governmental organization founded in May 2017 to prevent violent conflicts and alleviate poverty, fostering peaceful coexistence and self-reliance in refugee and host communities.
CECI was founded by Patrick Chandiga Justine Abure, who was displaced from Yei, South Sudan, in 2016 due to war, making him the third generation in his family to experience forced migration. His lived experiences of educational deprivation, child labor, hate speech, ethnic discrimination, and violence have deeply shaped CECI's commitment to locally-led innovations in peacebuilding, education, livelihood, and environmental protection.
CECI empowers youth, women, and girls to prevent violent conflicts, build resilience, rebuild livelihoods, and actively participate in development. Guided by strong values of professionalism, teamwork, honesty, commitment, personal development, accountability, and transparency, CECI is dedicated to creating sustainable solutions driven by local needs and communities.
Our Mission
The mission of CECI Uganda is to promote peace, self-reliance and dignity through recreational activities, education and other innovations going beyond relief and development.
Our Vision
An Empowered, Peaceful, and Self-reliant community.
Our Objectives
- Build peace and improve social cohesion
- Build skills to support development and peace
- Promote girl child education and early childhood development
- Increase community knowledge and understanding of HIV/AIDs care and prevention
- Eradicate Gender Based Violence
- Green the environment
- Foster creativity and innovation among youth in their respective fields of practice
Our Values
We believe in the strength and value of collaboration and respect for each other’s strengths, which can lead to successful outcomes.
We uphold the highest level of integrity and transparency in all our dealings and interactions.
Read our Code of Conduct
We work within established timelines and remain focused on achieving our desired results.
We act with integrity, provide quality service, and take responsibility for our actions.
Read our Code of Conduct
We value learning and growth, and we encourage feedback, coaching, and mentorship for all team members.
We are responsive, compliant, and maintain clear and open communication with the people we serve and work with.
Our Approach
We encourage our beneficiaries to participate actively in our programs right from the needs assessment to the implementation, monitoring and evaluation and sharing of lessons learned.
We place the community at the forefront of all programs and project interventions and recognize it as the purpose of our existence.
We work and coordinate our activities with government and non-governmental organizations, refugee structures, and other local stakeholders within our operational areas.
We maintain transparency in all program activities and associated budgets, which can be accessed by anyone upon request.
Our program activities are not imposed from the top down but are instead based on the needs of our beneficiaries.