Organizational background; Uganda is a home to almost 1.4 million refugees and this number keeps increasing every day due to conflict around the neighboring countries including our home country DRC. With these big numbers living in settlements, Rwamwanja settlement has 91,362 refugees as of May 2023. With this population women and girls are more vulnerable and face challenges like GBV, lack of life skill to improve their livelihood, unplanned pregnancies all these challenges led to the formulation of Pillar for Africa Development as a community-based organization in the settlement to empower these women and girls facing challenges to have a hopeful future. Pillar for Africa Development (PAD) is a refugee led organization operating in Rwamwanja Settlement in Uganda. PAD was founded in 2018 by Gatware Munyamirindi and some of his colleagues who had the same initiative of supporting their fellow refugees to develop and give a hopeful life to their community. PAD operates mainly in 3 sectors that include; Livelihood, Education and Protection through gender-based interventions and community engagements. Mission and Objectives of the organization; Mission: Envisioning Africa with empowered communities, designing and implementing innovations for their own sustainable future that builds hope and solidarity. Vision: To innovate, catalyze, educate and advocate for ecosystem, livelihood and gender equality for a sustainable development for communities in Africa. Objectives: Promote self-reliance for refugee women. Empowering women and promoting gender equality Fostering social integration and peaceful co-existence. Facilitating education and vocational training. Overview of programs and initiatives offered by PAD; Life skills training for Women at risk. We have trained about 150 women and girls who are survivors, these skills we train them are tailoring, hand crafts and arts, hairdressing, bakery and Sanitary kits making. Supported 6 groups with rabbitsAnother group we gave money to start a business and now we are grateful. They used the money well in six months. He took out their families and helped the group to get five (5) sheep to start rearing them as a way of improving their livelihoods Backyard gardening training and establishment in 200 Households Community engagement and sensitization on GBV. We were able to reach 4 zones in the settlement. Advocate for meaningful participation of refugee led organizations where we have participated in different coordination meetings and functions. So far PAD has been able to support 11 groups with VSLA kits and trained on digital savings. 3 groups were given rabbits to start rabbit farming, they were given 20 rabbits each, now each group has like 80 rabbits and the 20 rabbits that were initially given to them have been transferred to other groups. In the 150 women and girls trained 30 made a group and now save regularly and have started their tailoring business as a group. Partnerships and Collaborations; PAD has engaged in different partnerships with different other organizations to see that they work together to achieve a common goal. Refugee Innovation Center Challenges and Restrictions; Funds and resources since most of the activities are funded by contributions from members. PAD seeks donors to support the work that is being done by these youths in the settlement. Equipments for operations; PAD also still has a challenge in making reports because they don’t have a computer and a camera to use in making reports and documentations. Capacity building for volunteers; All this work is done by volunteers who are mostly youths and they do it without pay, however they need to build their capacities so that they can do it better following all standard procedures needed. Partnerships with other organizations; It’s still a challenge to partner with international organizations since they still see RLOs as incompetent. Future Plans; Advocacy on different issues that refugees face especially women and girls Building a leaning center for skills training and public speaking classes More livelihood projects for youths and women at risk Building capacity within the organization How you can be involved; Donations and fundraising Advocacy and awareness campaigns Collaborations and partnerships Volunteering opportunities Conclusion; PAD is doing a lot of initiatives to support the community and the impact is seen when we see hope and resilience in the households that had lost everything. However, We still need your helping hands to support us in this journey we started in 2018 for supporting these households to gain skills that will support them and the next generation.