Refugee girls are not defined by displacement.

Refugee Can Be partners with refugee girls from Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement in Uganda as they journey from primary school to secondary education, investing in the education, safety, belonging, and opportunities that allow their leadership to flourish. We believe every girl already possesses the intelligence, imagination, and agency to shape her own future and contribute to the future of her community.

What becomes possible

when the right conditions exist.

Displacement interrupts far more than a place to call home. It can interrupt the conditions that allow a young person to learn, belong, and build a future. Education cannot be separated from safety. Opportunity cannot be separated from stability. That is why Refugee Can Be is intentionally holistic.

We invest in the conditions that allow refugee girls not only to stay in school, but to thrive there, lead with confidence, and shape the future of their communities.

Our mission is to create the conditions that allow refugee girls to become everything they are capable of becoming. We begin with girls from Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement in Uganda, investing in education, safety, belonging, and opportunity so they can shape their own futures and strengthen their communities.

Refugee Can Be is both a declaration and an aspiration. It declares that displacement is an experience, not an identity. It aspires to a future where refugee girls are recognized not for what they have survived, but for the leadership they bring to their communities and to the world. We envision a world where refugee leadership shapes the future of displacement itself.

Uwezo is the Swahili word for potential - the inherent capacity to create, influence, and shape the future.

It is the belief at the heart of Refugee Can Be.

We believe every refugee girl already carries within her the leadership, imagination, and agency to shape her own future. Our work is not to create that potential, but to invest in the conditions that allow it to flourish.

Refugee Can Be was founded on a fundamental belief: refugee girls are not held back by a lack of potential. They are too often held back by a lack of the opportunities and conditions that allow that potential to flourish.

That understanding was shaped by founder Chantale Zuzi's own experience of displacement and her years living in Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement. She came to see that lasting change requires more than scholarships or short-term support. It requires an ecosystem where education, safety, belonging, and long-term opportunity work together.

Returning to Rwamwanja, Chantale worked alongside girls, their families, local educators, and the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda to build the model that became Refugee Can Be.

What began with lived experience became a commitment to ensure that displacement does not determine the limits of a girl’s future.

The Refugee Can Be Model

Refugee Can Be is built on a fundamental understanding: opportunity must be sustained over time.

Our model accompanies girls across key stages of their education and development. Today, that commitment is expressed through three connected pathways.

SUCCESS AT HOME

Success at Home begins in Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement, where we partner with girls and their families as they complete primary school and prepare for the transition to secondary education.

Children with their parents seated in a classroom

NEW HORIZONS

New Horizons accompanies girls through secondary education in Kampala. Girls attend school and live in a Refugee Can Be residential home, where a holistic model brings together academic support, health and well-being, mentorship, family connection, safety, and belonging.

Chantale standing and speaking to the children and their parents in front of a blackboard

BEYOND SECONDARY SCHOOL

Refugee Can Be is developing pathways into university, vocational training, entrepreneurship, and careers, continuing its investment as young women pursue economic independence and define their own paths forward.

Four refugee girls, sitting on the swing and smiling

THE MODEL IN PRACTICE

Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement is home to approximately 90,000 people and is served by a single secondary school. For girls completing primary education, this leaves limited pathways to continue their education.

After completing primary school in Rwamwanja, girls in the New Horizons pathway transition to Kampala for a six-year secondary education journey, where they attend school and live together in a Refugee Can Be residential home.
Their days extend beyond the classroom. At the residential home, education is surrounded by the relationships and resources that sustain it- from health and academic support to family connection, safety, belonging, and biweekly mentorship with students in Los Angeles.

This is the Refugee Can Be model in practice: sustained investment across the years and transitions that shape a girl’s future.

SEE OUR WORK

Invest in refugee leadership

Refugee Can Be invites individuals, institutions, and communities into long-term partnership with refugee girls and the futures they are building.

At the center of that commitment is the Six-Year Promise - an invitation to invest alongside a girl throughout her secondary education, recognizing that opportunity is not a single moment, but something sustained over time.

You can also give, contribute your expertise, build a partnership, invite Chantale to speak, or introduce others to the work.

GET INVOLVED

Make a long-term investment in possibility.

Your gift sustains the opportunities and support that allow refugee girls to pursue their ambitions, make choices about their futures, and exercise the leadership they already possess.

Give directly to Refugee Can Be and sustain the work across each stage of a girl’s journey.

Make a sustained commitment alongside a girl throughout her six years of secondary education.

Companies, foundations, and institutions can invest through grants, employee matching, sponsorships, and other forms of partnership.

Include Refugee Can Be in your will or estate plans and extend your investment in refugee leadership to generations to come.

WAYS TO GIVE

Refugee Can Be does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, and ethnic origin and is committed to providing programs and a workplace free from racial discrimination.

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