Faced with displacement in 2017, when escalating insecurity in Burundi led to the kidnapping of her father, forced by fear and uncertainty, Rebecca fled with her husband and children in search of safety, eventually finding refuge in Uganda. Upon arrival, the family was received at the Nakivale Reception Centre.

The early years were marked by deep hardship. With no stable source of income, Rebecca’s family depended entirely on food rations for survival for nearly two years as they struggled to rebuild their lives in a new and unfamiliar environment.

When they were later settled in Kibaale C zone within the settlement, a fragile sense of stability emerged, but life remained difficult. A monthly cash support of UGX 110,000, later reduced to UGX 60,000, was barely enough to meet basic needs of Rebecca and their five children.
Like many determined mothers, Rebecca refused to remain trapped in dependency, relying on resilience as her only capital, she rented a small piece of land at UGX 60,000 for three months and ventured into subsistence farming.

She planted maize and beans, harvesting 200 kilograms of maize and 100 kilograms of beans, but for her, it was a first step toward rebuilding dignity through work.

In 2025 she enrolled in the Connecting Youth to Gainful Entrepreneurship (Y-Connect) project. Over three months at Rubondo Community Centre, Rebecca received hands-on training in horticulture, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship. For the first time, she learnt to go an extra mile to think as a farmer and as a businesswoman.

But beyond the skills, she gained confidence and a pathway forward through the project’s model and was allocated 25 by 30 meter demonstration garden. There, she planted tomatoes. From her first harvest, she earned UGX 950,000 an income she had never imagined possible from farming. With it, she purchased a pig, which later gave birth to three piglets marking her first step into livestock investment and asset accumulation.

Post training, Rebecca received a startup package including fertilizer, pesticides, tomato seeds, and UGX 1.1 million in cash support from Y-Connect. With this foundation, she expanded her ambition, now leasing a 35 by 35 meter plot where she is actively cultivating tomatoes, supported by a water pumping machine for irrigation to ensure constant supply of water even during drought. Her projected earnings from the current cycle stand at UGX 3.5 million which she expects within a production cycle of three months.