Choose Life — Autonomy in Karamoja
In Moroto, in Ugandan Karamoja, living with HIV often means living in poverty, isolation and dependency. Choose Life is the project that works to change that equation — not through assistance, but through concrete tools to build autonomy.
Who they are
Choose Life Home Based Care is a community organisation founded by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Moroto in 2007. It works with families affected by HIV/AIDS, poverty and food insecurity across eight sub-counties of the district. In nearly twenty years it has reached over 1,000 people, building an intervention model that starts not from emergency but from people's capacity to change their own conditions.
How it works
The project is structured each year around three areas, adapted to the needs and results of the previous edition.
Microcredit and savings groups. HIV-positive women receive financial literacy training and start-up capital to launch small businesses — restaurants, trade, market stalls. A portion of the funds is returned at the end of each cycle to finance new groups. A model that sustains itself.
Agroforestry. Groups of farmers learn sustainable cultivation techniques and receive seeds, seedlings and tools. Vegetables and fruit trees improve family nutrition and generate income through the sale of surplus produce.
Beekeeping. Already active groups are trained and supported in managing apiaries, harvesting and marketing honey. Not a new project — the progressive strengthening of something that already works.
What we have seen
From 2021 to 2025 we supported four consecutive editions, with a total contribution of over €37,000. Each year the project directly reached between 61 and 91 people, with ripple effects on families and surrounding communities.
The numbers say something, but not everything. What the reports convey most powerfully is something else: women who stop depending on CLHBC for food and medicine, children who return to school because their mothers can pay the fees, beekeepers who sell their first honey harvest and reinvest the proceeds. The same logic, year after year: train first, deliver then, measure over time.
Why we do it
Choose Life's model reflects the one we believe in: responsibility entrusted to the community, recovery of the investment to finance new cycles, skills that remain even after the project ends. Casa Costa Foundation ETS is present in Karamoja through several interventions — a dormitory, classrooms, school farming. Supporting Choose Life means strengthening the same territory from another direction: that of income, health, and everyday dignity.
