When Young People Are Seen, Their Futures Open
On a Saturday afternoon in Kampala, a group of teenagers gathered around a microphone. They were not performers. They were not trained journalists. They were students from schools across the city, recording an episode of the Peer Power Podcast, a youth-led audio series on sexual and reproductive health, relationships, and growing up in Uganda.
For some of them, it was the first time they had been asked to speak openly about their lives.
UG Teens was founded in 2018 by a young Ugandan social entrepreneur who believed that the most effective way to reach adolescents with health information was through other adolescents. The idea was simple: train young people to lead conversations about SRHR in their own schools and communities, using formats they already trusted, peer groups, social media, podcasts, and school clubs.
What began as a small pilot in three schools in Kampala grew into a national programme. By 2024, UG Teens had expanded to 46 schools across Uganda, trained over 500 peer educators, and reached more than 80,000 young people through a combination of in-school programming, digital content, and community outreach.
The core of UG Teens' approach is its peer education model. Young people between the ages of 13 and 19 are trained as peer educators and given the tools to lead structured sessions on topics including puberty, contraception, consent, mental health, and gender-based violence. These sessions take place in school settings, but they are designed to feel different from a classroom lesson. They are interactive, conversational, and grounded in the real questions young people have.
"When a young person hears about contraception from a teacher, they listen. When they hear it from a peer, they ask questions."
The Peer Power Podcast became one of UG Teens' most visible outputs. Produced entirely by young people, the podcast tackled topics that are often considered taboo in Ugandan public discourse, including teenage pregnancy, HIV, and LGBTQ+ health. It was distributed through social media and played in school clubs, reaching audiences that traditional health programming often misses.
UG Teens' rapid growth was enabled by a multi-year partnership with an international SRHR organisation that provided both funding and technical support. That partnership allowed UG Teens to professionalise its operations, hire staff, develop curricula, and expand into new districts.
But when the international partner restructured its global portfolio in 2025, UG Teens lost its primary funder. The transition was abrupt. There was no formal exit plan, no bridge funding, and no structured handover of the technical support that had been embedded in the partnership.
The impact was immediate. School-based programmes were paused. Peer educators who had been receiving small stipends were told there was no budget. The podcast went on hiatus. The organisation's founder, who had been focused on programme growth, was suddenly spending most of their time trying to keep the organisation alive.
UG Teens has not closed. Its founder continues to lead the organisation, and a small number of peer educators continue to operate voluntarily. But the gap between what UG Teens was doing and what it can now do is significant. The infrastructure that was built, the school partnerships, the training systems, the content production pipeline, is at risk of eroding if sustained support is not restored.
This is the paradox of youth-led organisations: they are often the most effective at reaching their target populations, but they are also the most vulnerable to funding disruptions. They tend to be led by young, first-time founders who may not yet have the networks, governance structures, or fundraising experience to weather a sudden loss of support.
UG Teens' story illustrates why accompaniment matters. Not just funding, but the kind of sustained, trust-based support that helps young organisations build the internal systems they need to survive and grow, even when external conditions change.