Icebreakers Uganda is a nonprofit care and support organisation for Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender people focused on Sexual Health, Sexual Health Rights advocacy, community mobilisation and HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention for all LGBT people.

TranzNetwork Uganda formerly known as Uganda Network for Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Persons (UNTGNC) was formed on the 23rd of July 2014.

Freedom And Roam Uganda (FARUG) is the oldest sorely Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer (LBQ) diverse persons and womyn’s rights organisation based in Uganda and established in 2003. They are a feminist organisation that reinforces feminist culture and principles, equality of womyn as stipulated in human rights and international instruments.

Icebreakers Uganda is a respected organisation in Uganda serving the LGBT community. FARUG serves the LBT community and has been at the forefront of amplifying the voices of this community. Similarly, Tranz Network has been hard at work to bring issues facing the trans community in Uganda into mainstream dialogue through meetings and research.

They have joined forces on Rapid Research For Agile Policy Making. 

Design Phase (6 months)

The project Rapid Research For Agile Policy Making studies and develops tools for rapid research cycles to understand the LGBTQ+ community members’ contribution to policy-making and transparency by governments, against a backdrop of publicly available academic and policy research. This is done through conducting research (needs assessment, key stakeholder interviews, focus group discussions) as well as policy analyses to understand;-

1) how data by the LGBTQ+ community is collected;
2) how the data is shared and;
3) how rapid research and prototyping is currently incorporated into policy-making.
This information is then used to create semi-automated digital and in-person tools to facilitate rapid research and sharing of anonymised findings with the larger community, through a combination of initial prototyping workshops followed by web-based resources.

The initial phase focuses on understanding the needs and challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community in conducting robust research and in sharing results, where the bottlenecks are, how urban/rural communities are impacted, how data is shared across individual activists, civil society and local/national bodies. The implementation phase then focuses on using this information to develop methodologies, tools and spaces for conducting rigorous, rapid research to inform decision making and hold institutions accountable. This is particularly pertinent as COVID19 has shown us that in unpredictable times, we need to pivot to new ways of being and doing, by incorporating both high-tech and low-tech solutions.

Implementation Phase (18 months)

The project aims to promote inclusive data-driven policies, participation and service delivery within the health sector in Uganda. The project will empower highly discriminated upon subgroups within marginalised communities to self – advocate and inform data collection processes, research products and policy recommendations generated by the project. The disaggregated data, collaborative data platform, evidence based research and policy recommendations will be utilised to influence and catalyse access to services especially health services and create access to safe political spaces, processes and participation by the aforementioned rights holders.

Lessons learnt and innovations from the design phase have informed the development of the Implementation Phase of the project.