Coterie Development Initiative (CDI) was born from a simple but radical conviction that the communities experiencing poverty, hunger, and marginalisation are not the problem, they are the solution.
CDI was established in Uganda by people who had seen firsthand what happened when development was done to communities rather than with them. Programs arrived, resources were deployed, and experts departed leaving little behind that communities could sustain on their own. The cycle continued, and communities remained dependent.
The founders of CDI asked a different question: What if we invested not in bringing solutions from outside, but in unleashing the creativity, knowledge, and determination that already exists within?
That question became the Accelerated Collective Action (ACA) methodology. A structured, community-led approach that combines visioning, mindset transformation, capacity building, and partnership to activate local leadership and drive sustainable development.
Since our founding, CDI has operated across Uganda, from Kabale in the Southwest to Kiboga in the Central region working with farmers, women’s cooperatives, youth groups, local governments, and national agencies. We have trained community facilitators, established women’s innovation hubs, linked farmers to markets, advocated in policy spaces, and helped rehabilitate schools and health infrastructure. Not by doing it ourselves, but by helping communities organise, plan, and lead.
Our inherent nature is creative, resourceful, self-reliant, responsible and productive. People have the capacity to be innovative. They are the major resource.
Our model has grown and deepened with every community we serve. Today, CDI’s five-pillar integrated framework reflects the accumulated wisdom of years of field learning, refined through honest evaluation, partner feedback, and the voices of the people at the centre of our work.
We are a registered Ugandan NGO, governed by a committed Board of Directors and guided by policies of inclusivity, transparency, gender mainstreaming, environmental responsibility, and HIV/AIDS sensitivity. We answer first to the communities we serve and to the belief that their empowerment is both the means and the measure of everything we do.
Our Purpose, Our Direction, Our Commitments
To positively impact the lives of the poor and marginalised by creating opportunities for creativity, innovation, participation, growth and development.
Empowered, Creative and Thriving Communities leading lives of plenty.
Four deeply held operational principles developed through experience and embedded in everything from programme design to community meetings.
In the face of social suppression and generations of dependency, focused and sustained action is required to awaken people to the possibility of self-reliance. CDI’s empowerment work builds confidence, organises communities, and supports people to take genuine charge of their own development not as beneficiaries of programs, but as authors of their own futures.
Our inherent nature is creative, resourceful, self-reliant, responsible, and productive. CDI’s approach begins with this premise. We do not arrive in communities as experts with answers. We arrive as partners who believe in each person’s capacity to innovate, lead, and contribute. Communities are not the problem, they are the greatest resource.
Our actions are shaped by, and affect, all other people and our natural environment. At CDI, we recognise that poverty and marginalisation are not individual failures, they are systemic conditions that require collective responses. When communities come together, they create change that no individual could generate alone. Our model is built on this truth.
Poverty is inextricably linked to health, education, environmental sustainability, decent work, and social justice. These issues cannot be solved in isolation. CDI’s integrated programs address multiple dimensions of wellbeing simultaneously because history has shown that solving one alone, without addressing the others, produces results that cannot last.
Five values underpin everything we do. From how we design programs to how we treat the communities we serve.
We ensure that all community members, especially the poor and marginalised are included in our initiatives and benefit fully from our programs. No one is left behind in CDI's work.
We focus on practices that create long-term benefits and resilience. Our goal is not short-term relief but the kind of change that communities can own, sustain, and build upon for generations.
We encourage and foster creativity to address the unique challenges faced by each community. We believe local knowledge, when properly activated, is the most powerful innovation engine there is.
We believe in the power of community participation and co-creation. Solutions designed with communities and not for them are the solutions that endure.
We maintain the highest standards of transparency and ethical conduct in all our operations and interactions. Trust is the foundation of everything we build.
