Rural Initiative for Community Empowerment West Nile

Our Story

RICE-WN started in 2004 and got registered in 2005 as a local community based organization (CBO) with Arua District Local Government (No. 445) and later got registered with Registrar of Companies of the Republic of Uganda as a company limited by guarantee in 2009 (No. 114390). Currently, the organization is registered with the National NGO Board (No. 10062)
Right from her formation, RICE-WN was built on three key words namely Empowerment, Rural Development and Community Focus. This is a deliberate focus on hard to reach communities to enable them grow out of poverty and indifference.
RICE-WN was formed because a group of people started reflecting on the question that communities used to ask them whenever they came for holidays and the question was “what have you brought for us?” The five members recognized their obligation to give back to the communities what they have learnt giving rise to ideas of empowerment, rural development and community focus.
RICE-WN started getting funds in 2007 and the level of funding has been increasing since then to date. The number of full time staff has reached about 40. They are all committed group of people running the projects being implemented. Additionally, RICE-WN has a number of Community Volunteers at the grassroots level and also works with the already established government community structure to achieve her Mission.
The needs in the communities are still great but the resources are limited. That is why members still have much work to do as far as contributions and resource mobilization is concerned.
ORGANIZATION TENETS
Vision: A model community based services provider for holistic transformation.
Mission: To advance and promote healthy community development
Core Values:
The values of RICE-WN can be summarized in the acronym 'STRENGTH' standing for:

• Simplicity
• Team spirit
• Respect
• Excellence
• Novelty
• Guardianship
• Time consciousness
• Honesty

RECOGNITIONS AND AWARDS
Over the years, RICE-WN has enjoyed the trust of partners and thus, the increase in the number of the partners. Additionally, the number of communities served and scope of activities have increased tremendously. The good work RICE-WN does have been recognized by a wide range of stakeholders as follows:
On August 7, 2014, the NGO Quality Assurance Certification Mechanism Committee awarded RICE-WN an NGO Quality Assurance Certificate for the quality work and best practices that the organization does.
Nwoya District Local Government recognized RICE-WN on October 19, 2014 for the distinguished service to the young people in the District, the Global Fund for Children as a partner for 2014-2015, Agro ProFocus Uganda for supporting West Nile Agribusiness (June 20, 2014), Arua Municipality – River Oli Division as the best service provider (2012-2013), Minnesota International Health Volunteers (WellShare International) for successfully completing a comprehensive request for application procedure under Uganda Malaria Partnerships (UMCP) 2008 – 2010. RICE-WN also won an award form Malaria and Childhood Illnesses Secretariat (MACIS) in 2013