Education and Empowerment.

Mission: "Pauline Juliet exists to supply girls of Uganda, and the world, the Education & Empowerment necessary to effect change within themselves and within their communities.”

Vision: "Striving towards the global Empowerment and Education of girls and women.”

PJWEA Vision: "Empowering communities through work with women.”
 

OUR STORY: 

Pauline Juliet today exists as a grassroots, community-led organization working towards sustainable change for women and girls in Kiboga and Kyankwanzi, Uganda. PJ projects are imagined, created, and carried out in Uganda, by Ugandans, for Ugandans. These projects are funded by grassroots fundraising efforts both in Uganda and America, often in America led by a small, unpaid team. With strong core values such as partnership, we have worked alongside many like-minded groups and organizations to supply women/girls of Kiboga with resources to better their futures. With focusing on community leadership and women-led projects, we have developed these projects specifically for the individuals impacted by them. Finally, with transparency and accountability, we have worked to better our organization every day.

PJ started with the radical notion that underrepresented communities deserve education and tools for change. Two girls inspired our team. Sisters, ages 10 and 12 when we met them, Pauline and Juliet were sisters who were forced to drop out of school after the death of both parents. Left in the hands of relatives who were unable to fully educate them, both were among the 130 million+ girls who are not able to attend school globally because of a wide variety of institutional, cultural, or personal circumstances.

As a young team, spearheaded by Henry (UG, age 21) and Lauren (U.S, age 19), we began with small but impactful projects.  Our story starts with the meager beginnings of Lauren working as a waitress to supplement the projects and as a student to strengthen the vision and Henry working in local government and with local schools directly to implement the projects. We did the most with the little fiscal and physical support we had, supplying scholarships to girls from low-income areas and supplying sanitary pads/hygiene products and school supplies to others. Through partnership, we teamed up with incredible local women, dozens of local schools, local government, and passionate individuals, and that is when our story truly began; because the story of PJ is the story of local Kiboga women working towards change and the local and global community supporting that initiative to help further it.  

Today (5 years later), Pauline Juliet has dozens of projects spanning Uganda, Kenya, and the U.S. However, most of our projects are concentrated in the rural area of Kiboga, Uganda and the surrounding districts. In Uganda, we have worked with 1,000 women, 1,000 girls, and the community at large. We are responsible for more projects than any other organization in the Kiboga region. Some of our biggest projects include sanitary pad distribution, reproductive health education, scholarships, farm and skill training, mentoring, and our women’s association, PJWEA, (Pauline Juliet’s Women’s Empowerment Association) made up of over 1,000 local women and 2,000 of their daughters. We have an office in the hub of Kiboga, and work from of our homes in the U.S. Our core team consists of five community leaders managing our Ugandan projects, one in Kenya, three in the U.S., as well as fifteen community-elected female executives managing PJWEA in Uganda. Our countless volunteers and donors make everything possible.

Kiwanuka Henry
Co-Founder & Executive Director of UG Operations

Lauren O’Brien
Co-Founder & Director of U.S. Operations