Annual Report 2025: Building Power, Care, and Disability Justice in Action
The Diverse Empowerment Foundation (DEF) is a disability-led, feminist organization working at the intersection of disability, gender, and sexuality to advance dignity, safety, and justice.
This page shares our 2025 Annual Report and the story behind the numbers.
It is not simply a summary of activities. It is a record of how communities continued to organize, care for one another, and build power in a year shaped by shrinking civic space and deepening exclusion.
Across Uganda and beyond, our communities faced systemic barriers rooted in ableism, homophobia, and structural inequality. In response, DEF did not retreat. We organized. We documented. We created space. We built with intention.
What This Report Represents
This report is about people. It reflects a community that continues to organize in the face of risk, to create spaces of safety and belonging even when those spaces are not guaranteed, to challenge systems that were never designed for us, and to insist on dignity, visibility, and justice.
It is also a reflection of DEF’s commitment to disability-led, intersectional practice, grounded not only in care but in accountability to the communities we serve.
Key Highlights from 2025
Throughout the year, DEF implemented work across multiple regions, including Mbale, Kasese, Wakiso, and Kampala, while also contributing to global conversations on disability justice.
30+ activities implemented
Across programs, community spaces, and advocacy efforts
500+ direct community engagements
People reached through in-person, peer-led, and safe space initiatives
100+ collaborations locally and globally
Building relationships across movements and regions
30,000+ people reached online
Extending conversations on disability justice beyond physical spaces
3 research outputs disseminated
Contributing to evidence and policy conversations
These figures trace the reach of the work, but they point to something harder to measure: rooms where people felt safe enough to speak, partnerships that shifted how inclusion is understood, and moments where being seen and supported was not assumed but actively made possible.
Our Approach: More Than Programming
In 2025, DEF’s work was guided by an integrated approach that brings together care, evidence, and movement-building in practice.
Community care meant creating spaces where people could arrive as they are, through healing circles, peer support spaces, and gatherings where there was no expectation to perform strength, only permission to exist and be held.
Evidence generation meant documenting lived realities not as stories extracted for reporting, but as knowledge that informs advocacy, from research outputs to community-led insights that shape how we engage policy spaces.
Strategic engagement meant working across movements, including disability, feminist, and LGBTQ+ spaces, to challenge the gaps that continue to exclude persons with disabilities, and to push for more intentional inclusion.
Movement building meant ensuring that those most often pushed to the margins were not just included, but positioned as leaders, facilitators, and decision-makers within the work itself.
This approach allowed DEF to respond not only to immediate needs but to the deeper systems that continue to produce exclusion.
What 2025 Required of Us
This was not an easy year.
Shrinking civic space, heightened risks for LGBTQIA+ persons, and entrenched disability exclusion shaped the environment in which this work took place. There were moments when access was limited, when safety could not be assumed, and when the weight of the work was felt deeply by both community members and the team.
Working within these realities required constant adaptation, careful decision-making, and a commitment to moving at the pace of safety rather than urgency.
It also reaffirmed something fundamental: that this work cannot be extractive, rushed, or detached. It must remain rooted in care, trust, and accountability.
continue to produce exclusion.
Disabled, queer, and gender-diverse individuals continue to navigate systems that exclude them at every level, from healthcare and policy spaces to community organizing itself.
DEF exists to confront that erasure.
We believe that disability justice cannot be treated as an afterthought, that inclusion must be intentional, and that those most affected must be at the center of shaping solutions.
This report is not only a reflection of what has been done, but a reminder of what continues to be necessary.
A Note on Trust and Solidarity
None of this work happens in isolation.
It is made possible through the trust of community members who choose to share their lives with us, partners who stand in solidarity even when it is uncomfortable, and supporters who understand that meaningful change requires time, care, and sustained commitment.
Read the Full Report
Explore the full Annual Report for a deeper look at our work, partnerships, and learning from 2025.
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