Support MAPLE Uganda's Entrepreneurship Center!

Note: Please view the brief video above before reading the rest of the story below. Just click the play arrow! Click any page to pause the video.

Our first cohort of entrepreneurs at our Mbale Center for Innovation and Design (MCID) need your support! 

This Center builds on MAPLE’s continued work since 2008 with over sixty rural villages across Northern and Eastern Uganda to: 

 1) Strengthen women-led savings and loan groups:

2) Support organic farming on ancestral lands for food security and income generation:

3) Develop sustainable microbusinesses:

http://www.wendylevine.com/

This strong network of MAPLE affiliated villages now constitutes a vibrant internal economy for locally managed, community development.  This extended network also provides a unique opportunity for MCID entrepreneurs to address three challenges:

1. How to co-design, with local communities, solutions to problems that locals actually need and can afford; 
2. How to overcome "the last mile distribution problem” to serve hard-to-reach rural areas;
3. How to ensure income and assets remain in communities rather than being extracted.

So, this is an exciting time for MCID entrepreneurs and for the many communities they serve.  Yet, it has been a tough year for all of us, including non-profits:

This headline from a year ago foretold that story:

"Nonprofits Face Bleak Future as Revenue Dries Up Amid Coronavirus
Canceled fundraisers and lost donations mean scaled-back services for struggling people; many charities left to ‘hope and pray and wait and see’"
Headline from the Wall Street Journal article by Betsy Morris, May 11, 2020

Still, MAPLE and the many communities we serve have prevailed in hard times before and, together, we will again.  Many of us have been more fortunate than others during these times.

While all of us have experienced consequences from the pandemic this past year, some of us have received stimulus checks, stock market increases, and tax-return kickers now that the economy is rebounding. This is a good time to support equity and justice by donating to good causes.  

So, we are asking for your help:

We need to raise $20,000 to continue supporting our first cohort of students and to include other deserving students as well.

We are already half-way there!

Friends of MAPLE have already provided a $10,000 match.  Thus, every dollar you donate will generate twice that amount to cover the following, specific items:

The success of this campaign will also bring in new grants: 

Our external funding agencies are keen to support organizations that demonstrate broad-based community support and capacity to sustain themselves financially in lean times. Your donations will help us renew existing grants and bring in new grants, thus bringing MCID to the next level.

So, please donate generously, now, through the secure donate button on this site!  

MAPLE Microdevelopment is a U.S. 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. 100% of your donation is tax-deductible (for U.S. taxpayers). 

Our tax ID # is 26-4010182.

Thank you for your generosity!

And thank you to our contining MAPLE Uganda Supporting Organizations:

The Putnam Foundation Environmental Committee

Institutional Energy Systems (IES)

Burn Manufacturing Nairobi

Stay for Good Community-First Vacation Rentals

Kulika, Uganda

The Gaia Foundation

The African Institute for Culture and Ecology

Engineering for Change

Oregon State University Humanitarian Engineering Program

The University of Michigan Doctoral Program in Design Science

Makerere University Business School

Friends of MAPLE Microdevelopment

If you have any questions, wish to become a Friend of MAPLE, or are interested in cooperating with us in any other way, please contact us at: 

info@maplemicro.org.