Refugee Led Organization Network 1. HISTORY
RELON Uganda was founded in May 2016 with the aim of strengthening the capacity of refugees to engage and respond to thechallenges facing refugees and refugee led organizations. The network was started by four organization’s namely Young African Refugees for Integral Development (YARID), Hope of Children and Women Victims of Violence (HOCW), Hope of Refugee in Action (HRA) and Coburwas International Youth Organization to Transform Africa (CIYOTA).
The RELON Uganda was formed to build capacity of RLOs by sharing of experiences, knowledge, data and opportunities with Refugee led organizations, advocate and lobby on behalf of Refugee led organizations, contribute to policy making affecting refugees, fundraise and mobilize resources for supporting refugee work in Uganda. Its membership has grown to over 50 RLOs.
The initial board of directors was comprised of the four founding members. A general assembly passed the resolution to incorporate four other members on board. This process was intended to facilitate gender balance and include other nationalities. The current board of directors was drawn from RELON Membership and is represented by five nationalities (South Sudanese, Sudanese, Congolese, Burundian and Somalia) in which two are female and six male.
2. ACHIEVEMENTS
In the last five years the network has built the capacity of RLOs through sub grants, training and advocacy at national and settlement levels. RELON Uganda pioneered the formation of Global Refugee Led Network and the Africa Refugee Led Network.
Achievements:
1. RELON Uganda was registered in 2016 as a company limited by guarantee under the registrar of companies in the Republic of Uganda.
2. In 2017 RELON Ugandabeing the first and only Refugee-Led Network that existed inAfrican Continent, specifically in the sub-Saharan region, contributed to the successful organization of the first global refugee summit held in Geneva in the same year. This is to say that two of its members are Global Refugee-Led Network founding members and sit in the Global Refugee-Led Network Steering Committee.
3. In 2019, RELON Uganda in collaboration with the Global Refugee-Led Network, with support from OSF, ID and Oxfam, organized the first Africa Refugee Summit that was held in Addis Ababa inEthiopia. As a result, RELON Uganda alone has 5 members in the Africa Refugee-Led Network steering committee.
4. In 2020, RELON Uganda got its first direct fund from Urban Refugees (UR) under the Covid-19 response project, in which RELON sub-granted 8 RLOs that are RELON active members to provide food and non-food items as a relief to the refugee and host-communities(Kampala). The beneficiaries include single mothers, child-headed families, and elderly
5. Early 2021, RELON received fund from OSF to support its institutional capacity, internal and external structures. We also supported and trained over 30 membersfrom 15 RLOs in the West Nile region. The training focused on proposal writing, fundraising and resource mobilization, and financial management.A pitching session was organized after the training where all the 15 RLOs presented their project ideas in which 7 RLOswith the best proposals were selected and sub-granted. In addition to this, subcommittees were formed in West Nile and Southwest Regions. We also established RELON’s head office in Kampala to coordinate its day to day activities.
6. Mid 2021 through June 2022, RELON implemented a livelihoods project (REBUiLD) in partnership with IRC funded by IKEA foundation to support refugee and hostcommunities acquire soft and vocational skills to better their livelihoods. Under this project, RELON supported 7 RLOs language centres with scholastic materials while language centre teachers were supported with monthly allowances. 75 direct beneficiariesacquired soft and vocational skills in various learning institutions whereas 350 indirect beneficiaries were impacted through the 7 supported language centres.
7. In the year 2019, RELON engaged both OPM and African commission on human and peoples’ rights in closed meetings to mitigate the sudden disconnection of refugee sim-cards in Uganda. As a result, the refugee sim-cards were reconnected after a few days. We’ve also engaged OPM in several closed meetings on the recognition of refugee nationalities on the conventional travel documents (CTDs). Currently, refugees are celebrating the newly issued CTDs that recognize their individual nationalities.
3.    INSTITUTIONAL PURPOSE
Mission:
To influence and advocate for inclusion and participation of refugees and RLOs all levels through, policy advocacy, RLO engagement and coordination and capacity building.

Institutional objectives:
▪ To enhance the capacity of RELON Uganda to coordinate and support RLOs in Uganda.
▪ To increase participation and inclusion of RLOs and to contribute to policy making and implementation on issues affecting refugees.
▪ To enhance coordination collaboration and linkages between RELON member’s, government and partners.
▪ To enhance the capacity of RLOs and government inUganda.

Field(s) of activity:
RELON Uganda operates in rural and urbanrefugee settlements including Kampala, West Nile and South West regions in the areas of Institutional Development, Policy Advocacy and Engagement, Coordination and Partnerships,Capacity building and membership Development, Networking and Research.
4. STRATEGIC POSITIONING
RELON is a duly registered organization with diverse, growing RLO active membership, good will, support from member organizations and presence of functionalsecretariat. This has enabled members to strengthen their capacities through sharing of best practices, diversity of skills, expertise and experiences within member organizations. RELON being a network and having access to over 50RLOs that also serve over 30,000 refugees from different nationalities, strategically makes RELON’s impact wider in terms of coverage which is a remarkable aspect regarding RELON’s position.

The willingness of development partners to support RELON Uganda activities and theexistence of RELON information on the world wide web and use of ICTs has increased focus on RLOs in the country by several donors. In addition, the localization concept also provides RLOs with space for engagement.

RELON Uganda has developed a good working relationship with the OPM which is a government arm in charge of refugees with the aim of providing policies that are favourable to refugees, provision of information and creation of an enabling political environment for the humanitarian space. RELON is alsoamember of the urban refugee working group led by both UNHCR and OPM in which urban actors come together to report on their ongoing activities. In return UNHCR and OPM also use the same platform to share information on emerging issues of concern.It isalso important to note that RELON is part of the inter-agency working group which is co-chaired by both OPM commissioner for refugees and UNHCR country representative. This working group is for information sharing among the actors in the humanitarian space in Uganda. In addition to these working groups, RELON plays a major role as a steering committee member of the Refugee Cluster under the UPR process andis a signatory and endorser of the C4C working Group in Uganda .

5. FUNCTIONAL ORGANISATIONAL CHARTinclude below your organisational chart)
The board of directors consist of 8 board members including 2 women and 6 men whereas the management comprises 7 staff in which 3 are women and 4 men. Currently RELON is recruiting 3 more