The Community Empowerment and Rehabilitation Initiative for Development (CERID) was established in 2016, under the NGO Act. The organisation was established as a response to the need of the community to address the wide spread poverty among women and youth concerning health, environment and education. CERID is demand driven  depending on what the communities they work in seek to have tackled in real time. They aim through their mission to promote and empower communities with Life Skills for self reliance and sustainable Development.

They activities include women and youth economic empowerment to ensure income generation through the creation of Voluntary Savings and Loan Association (VSLAs) managed by women and youth directly.

CERID’s Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment builds on the successes of Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model under which savings groups are formed at the community level to reduce poverty by financially and socially empowering poor and vulnerable people. CERID intends to expand this programme to Koboko district with an element of business/livelihoods promotion for vulnerable women with the aim of economically empowering them and building their capacity to improve the well-being of their families especially for health and nutrition of their children.

The project is implemented through mobilising women into VSLAs, registering VSLAs with local authorities, capacity gap assessment of aspiring businesswomen, training 200 women in Business/ livelihood skills and hands on experience, identifying business mentors, mentoring  200 women in business and starting up new business/livelihoods ventures.