Who We Are
Community Development Centre (CDC) is an indigenous South Sudanese, grassroots-driven, non-profit organisation built around the idea of a centre for communities: a place where people can come together, connect, learn, share ideas, access opportunities, and take collective action. Working alongside communities in South Sudan and Uganda, we create spaces for dialogue, collaboration, and locally led solutions that transform livelihoods through sustainable agriculture, strengthen food security, advance self-reliance, build resilience, and foster lasting peace.
We believe every community deserves a place to gather, a voice to be heard, and the opportunity to shape its own future.
In Uganda, we are a refugee-led organisation, one of the first refugee-led organisations to start serving their fellow refugees in 2016.
Led from within
Founded in 2014, we create opportunities that empower people, strengthen resilience, and improve the quality of life of vulnerable communities.
We believe sustainable development happens when communities are at the centre of decision-making. So rather than working for communities, we work with them: identifying priorities, designing solutions, and strengthening the local leadership and institutions that help people thrive.
Our work is rooted in the experiences of displaced and marginalised people. We serve refugees, returnees, internally displaced people and host communities, with a particular focus on women, youth, children and persons with disabilities. We support livelihoods, sustainable farming and agriculture, and the economic empowerment of our communities. Peacebuilding sits at the heart of our work, alongside health, education, environmental stewardship and cultural preservation.
- 2014
Founded in Yei, South Sudan, as “Voice of the Land”
- 2016
Officially registered as Community Development Centre (CDC), a national NGO, with the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission
- September 2016
Uganda Country Programme established (refugee-led). DRC programmes started in 2017
- 3
Countries: South Sudan, Uganda and DRC, with a few recent support engagements in Kenya in 2025
Mission and Vision
Our Mission
To work for the welfare of communities, alleviate poverty, and drive sustainable development and social transformation through empowerment, participation, innovation, and inclusive partnerships.
Our Vision
Strong communities that are well-informed, peaceful, healthy, resilient, self-reliant, thriving, and able to realise their full potential.
“In the community, by the community, for the community.”
What Guides Us
Open Culture
We value openness, dialogue, trust and mutual respect. Everyone’s ideas and experiences count, inside our team and in the communities we serve.
Partnership
Lasting change comes through collective action. We work with communities, governments, donors, civil society and the private sector, on the basis of trust and shared responsibility.
Accountability
We answer first to the communities we serve, then to our partners and donors. We keep honest records, report openly and handle resources responsibly.
Responsiveness
We stay close to communities, so that we notice changing needs early and respond quickly, appropriately and effectively.
Innovation
We combine local knowledge, technology and evidence to find practical solutions, and we keep learning and adapting as we go.
Community
Communities are at the heart of everything we do. We work hand in hand with local people, listening and respecting local knowledge, so they can lead and sustain solutions to their own challenges.
Sustainability
We plan for sustainability from the start of every intervention, creating lasting social, economic, cultural and environmental benefits. We strengthen local ownership and systems so communities can sustain progress for generations to come.
Why communities and partners trust CDC
Led from within
CDC was founded by young South Sudanese, and our trust with communities, traditional leaders and local authorities has been built over more than a decade. That trust lets us reach and mobilise people quickly, even in hard-to-reach and volatile areas.
We understand displacement first-hand
We have lived through conflict, displacement and recovery alongside the people we serve. That experience shapes programmes that are context-specific, culturally appropriate and empathetic.
Innovation rooted in local knowledge
We combine ancestral knowledge with practical technology so that tools fit places with weak networks and limited resources.
Present across borders
With work in South Sudan, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we can share learning across borders and address challenges communities face on both sides of a boundary.