From Buliisa, Uganda to Kenya: What Happens When Communities Lead
A business idea can start anywhere.
It can begin at a market stall, in a family home, on a farm, or with someone simply wondering if the skill they already have could become a source of income.
In Buliisa, Uganda, Street Business School (SBS) has been working alongside Empower and Shine and local organizations to help people turn those ideas into businesses. In 2025, more than 670 new entrepreneurs graduated from the SBS entrepreneurship training program through the first phase of our Rise Up project with Empower and Shine (click here to read more).
In 2026, that work reached beyond Buliisa, crossing the border into Kenya and bringing practical entrepreneurship training to even more communities.
But the journey was about more than expanding from one country to another. It was about discovering what becomes possible when local organizations are given the tools, support, and opportunity to lead.
Building on what worked
The story began with Project Ayimalu in Buliisa in 2025.
The experience showed what locally led entrepreneurship training could look like when community organizations brought their own relationships and knowledge to the work. When the opportunity came to continue the work in 2026, six local organizations in Buliisa stepped forward to lead new training cohorts.
At the same time, the model expanded into Kenya through five SBS partners who had previously been certified to deliver SBS and had been working in their own communities.
Together, these organizations delivered 26 training cohorts, giving people the opportunity to learn practical business skills in communities where they already live and work.
By the end of the project, 1,591 people had completed the training—1,402 women and 189 men.
Behind that number are entrepreneurs with different businesses, different circumstances, and different goals. What connected them was the opportunity to learn, practice, and begin applying new business skills to their everyday lives.
Bringing training closer to where people are
One of the strengths of working through local organizations is that they understand their communities in ways an outside organization cannot.
They know the languages people speak. They understand the rhythm of local markets. They know when farming seasons are busiest and what can make it difficult for someone to attend a training session.
That local knowledge helped partners bring SBS training into their communities in ways that made sense for the people taking part, from the bustling capital city of Nairobi to the open grasslands of the Masaai Mara.
In Kenya, participants also received translated Swahili workbooks, making it easier to follow the six-module curriculum and continue practicing what they learned between sessions.
The training was not simply about sitting in a classroom and listening. Participants worked through practical business concepts and received individual coaching along the way, helping them connect what they were learning to their own businesses and ideas.
And then, the numbers began to tell the story
By the end of the training, participants had recorded an 88% average increase in income.
81% had at least one business, while the percentage of participants with savings increased from 48.8% to 85.2%.
Perhaps just as striking was the change in confidence.
At the beginning of the program, 56.7% of participants said they were very confident in their ability to succeed as a business owner. By the end, that number had risen to 95.9%.
These numbers matter because they represent more than business growth.
They represent someone becoming more confident in a business they are building. Someone beginning to save. Someone seeing possibilities where they may not have seen them before.
Growth also comes with lessons
Expanding the work into new communities brought its own challenges.
In some places, farming, market days, travel distances, and other responsibilities made fixed training schedules difficult. Heavy rains and flooding also disrupted activities in some communities in Kenya.
Those experiences reinforced an important lesson: there is no one-size-fits-all approach to community-based entrepreneurship training.
Programs have to be flexible enough to fit people’s realities while maintaining the quality of the training and support they receive. That’s part of the magic of how SBS delivers programming through intentional partnerships with trusted, local leaders.
The project also showed how important strong data and consistent coaching are as programs grow. For SBS and its partners, these lessons are helping shape how we approach future work with grassroots organizations.
From one community to many
The journey from Buliisa to Kenya shows what can happen when communities are not simply recipients of a program, but active leaders in delivering it.
In 2025, the work in Buliisa reached 671 graduates. In 2026, the expanded Rise Up project reached 1,591 graduates across Uganda and Kenya.
But perhaps the most important part of the story is what sits behind those numbers.
It is the entrepreneur who leaves a training session with a new way of thinking about her business. The person who starts saving regularly. The business owner who gains confidence in her ability to succeed.
And it is the local organizations making sure that opportunity reaches the people and communities they know best.
The journey continues—but the lesson is already clear: when local leadership and practical entrepreneurship training come together, opportunity can travel much further than anyone initially imagined.
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