Rolande Ansiima Casinga founded FOLONA in Nakivale Refugee Settlement to empower displaced communities through refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda.
Rolande Ansiima Casinga was 15 when armed militia forced her family to flee North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a region devastated by conflict that has killed over six million people since 1996 in what has been called Africa’s World War. She found safety in Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement, one of Africa’s oldest and the world’s eighth-largest, stretching 184 square kilometers near the Tanzanian border and sheltering tens of thousands of refugees from multiple countries.
In settlements where food rations were drastically reduced and environmental degradation threatened already fragile livelihoods, Rolande saw permaculture as a pathway to self-reliance rather than perpetual dependence on humanitarian aid. She gained experience in nutrition, permaculture apprenticeships, and community organizing before deciding she had enough knowledge to act. That action was founding FOLONA, For the Love of Nature, in 2021 with seven colleagues, officially registering the community-based organization in 2022.
Refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda through FOLONA addresses interconnected challenges simultaneously. Food insecurity, climate vulnerability, gender inequality, and limited livelihood opportunities don’t exist separately in refugee settlements; they compound each other. Permaculture’s integrated design approach enables FOLONA to tackle these issues together rather than through fragmented programs addressing symptoms individually.
FOLONA’s community farm in Nakivale serves as a living learning center where refugees from diverse backgrounds practice sustainable agriculture together. The farm demonstrates permaculture techniques including polycultures, agroforestry, composting, and water-efficient irrigation. Beyond food production, the farm fosters collaboration, knowledge exchange, and social cohesion among people from seven different nationalities who might otherwise remain separated by language and cultural barriers.
The organization has hosted over 12 Permaculture Design Certificate courses, training more than 500 community members in regenerative practices. Graduates apply techniques on their own plots, improving household food security while building skills transferable beyond settlement life. Some participants pursue permaculture, teaching themselves, extending refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda through the same multiplication principle that characterizes effective permaculture programs worldwide.
Women’s empowerment forms a central pillar. Through practical workshops, FOLONA equips women from refugee and host communities with leadership skills, financial literacy, and training in sustainable livelihoods. The organization distributed over 1,000 reusable sanitary pads, addressing menstrual health barriers that prevent girls from attending school and women from participating fully in community activities. Reproductive health education ensures women have the knowledge and resources to make autonomous decisions.
FOLONA equips women from refugee and host communities with leadership, financial literacy, and sustainable livelihood training, while distributing over 1,000 reusable sanitary pads, demonstrating that refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda addresses food security, gender equality, and climate resilience simultaneously. Photo courtesy of FOLONA.
Refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda gained international recognition when Rolande presented at the 15th International Permaculture Convergence in Taiwan in December 2024. Standing on the global permaculture stage, she shared how refugees in Nakivale plant gardens of resilience, how women pass on traditional knowledge, and how communities use permaculture to restore dignity, hope, and self-reliance. Her presence demonstrated that permaculture leadership emerges from every context, including settlements where people arrived with nothing.
FOLONA works on the frontlines of climate change, supporting communities adapting to unpredictable weather, droughts, and land degradation. Climate-smart agriculture, tree planting, water harvesting, and ecosystem restoration help build environmental resilience in a settlement where degraded land and erratic rainfall threaten food production. These ecological interventions simultaneously improve growing conditions and demonstrate responsible land stewardship.
The organization now builds something truly lasting: a permaculture community learning center providing permanent infrastructure for training, demonstration, and community gathering. The center will anchor refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda beyond individual courses, building institutional capacity to sustain programming regardless of external funding cycles.
What distinguishes FOLONA from externally managed NGO programs is ownership. Rolande and her team aren’t aid recipients implementing someone else’s agenda. They identified their community’s needs, designed solutions that drew on both permaculture principles and traditional Congolese agricultural knowledge, and built an organization that reflects the people it serves. Staff and volunteers come from the settlement itself.
This refugee-led approach produces different outcomes than conventional humanitarian programming. When people design their own food systems, they integrate cultural food preferences, social structures, and local ecological knowledge that outside experts might overlook. Community trust develops more quickly when leaders share their lived experience of displacement. Solutions persist because communities own them rather than depending on external organizations that eventually leave.
Refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda sets FOLONA apart from conventional aid programs, with Rolande and her team designing solutions rooted in both permaculture principles and traditional Congolese farming knowledge, staffed entirely by people from within the settlement itself. Photo courtesy of FOLONA.
Refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda through FOLONA also challenges narratives that frame refugees exclusively as victims requiring assistance. Rolande and her colleagues demonstrate agency, innovation, and leadership emerging from crisis. Their work shows that displaced communities possess knowledge, energy, and vision to build regenerative systems; they need resources and recognition, not rescue.
FOLONA’s technology and innovation programs introduce digital skills and entrepreneurship training, expanding livelihood opportunities beyond agriculture. Community events promote cultural exchanges and environmental protection, strengthening social bonds across nationalities. The combination of practical agriculture, women’s empowerment, environmental restoration, health education, and technology training creates an integrated support system addressing settlement life holistically.
At 24, Rolande has built an organization touching over 500 lives across seven nationalities in one of the world’s most challenging environments. Refugee-led permaculture education in Uganda through FOLONA proves that when displaced communities receive support to lead their own development, they create solutions as resilient as the people who design them, rooted in dignity, growing through knowledge, and bearing fruit for everyone willing to participate.
