BWEN — the Buntu Wellbeing Experience Network — is a Ugandan organization that turns lived experience into community-designed solutions. We work at the intersection of sexual and reproductive health, dignity, storytelling, and citizen-led innovation, across Uganda and the wider IMAGI-NATION network.
We began in 2015 as the Wellbeing Foundation, established at Cavendish University in Kampala. The premise was simple and stubborn: the people closest to a problem are closest to its solution — they've just rarely been given the tools, the platform, or the trust to lead.
Over the following decade, that premise grew into a method. We built listening spaces, ran health and dignity programs, took hard conversations into the open through podcasts and public campaigns, and turned waste into runways of self-expression. What started as a foundation became a network — of parish leaders, young people, artists, facilitators, and partners.
Today we operate as BWEN, the Buntu Wellbeing Experience Network — the operating and brand name of THE WELL-BEING FOUNDATION LTD, registered in Uganda. "Buntu" draws on the philosophy of shared humanity: I am because we are. It is the thread through everything we build.
Our mission is to grow community wellbeing by putting design power in the hands of the people who live the challenges. We don't arrive with finished answers. We open a listening process, map what a community already knows, prototype together, and ship real things — then report honestly on what happened.
This is The Frame: our operating model of Community Solution Labs, School Clubs, the Shebang Trashion movement, and the Menstruation Station. Each is a tool for the same job — turning conversation into co-designed action on sexual and reproductive health, dignity, and opportunity.
The people closest to a problem lead the design. We build with, not for.
Every program starts from the worth of the person in front of us — no shame, no silence.
We report on a 90-day cycle — what we spent, what we shipped, what we learned.
Founded as the Wellbeing Foundation at Cavendish University, Kampala — a commitment to community-led wellbeing.
Through the Swedish Institute's Creative Force programme, we trained a cohort of parish-level leaders — building a distributed backbone of community organizers.
We opened the Menstruation Station — the pink house in Kisenyi, Kampala — and launched the #NoPeriodShame campaign, which reached 650K people across 17 countries and five continents.
Four editions of our trashion movement — menstrual health, sexual & reproductive rights, dignity, and climate — turning waste into runways and taboo into public conversation.
Operating as the Buntu Wellbeing Experience Network — 25 Community Solution Labs, School Clubs, and an ethical investment vehicle in Golden Agency Minerals, connected across the IMAGI-NATION network.
BWEN is part of a global network of Indigenous-led systems design, working alongside AIME and the IMAGI-NATION network. Over the years our work has been supported by partners including the Swedish Institute, Wise Economy Global Association, Forum Syd, and Sonke Gender Justice.
We also build our own sustainability. Through our Shop, we sell the products and tools we design; through Golden Agency Minerals, we connect ethical gold to the communities that mine it. Both fund the work directly — so the mission grows on its own terms.
Buy the tools we build, sponsor a program, invest through Golden Agency, or simply follow the journey. Every path moves the mission forward.