Ancient + Brave x Love Mercy Foundation: Supporting Communities in Northern Uganda
4 Min read
Get to know our non-profit charity partner, Love Mercy Foundation, and discover how your shopping is helping communities in Northern Uganda to access essential healthcare and overcome the cycle of poverty.
Meet The Love Mercy Foundation
“One humble person can make a difference”. That’s the powerful motto of The Love Mercy Foundation, a charity in Northern Uganda with a simple yet profound mission: to co-design innovative solutions with local communities, helping them to overcome poverty and improve well-being.
Born from the shared vision of Olympic runners Julius Achon (from Awake, Uganda) and Eloise Wellings (from Sydney, Australia), projects like the Cents 4 Seeds initiative and the Tailoring Programme exemplify their approach.
Cents 4 Seeds: For just £16, this incredible program empowers women in Africa with 30 kg of seed, essential farming tools and training workshops, along with financial literacy education. Not only does this yield a crop of 150 kg, providing food security and economic independence, but 30 kg of the seed is returned and used to support another woman.
Tailoring Programme: Empowers youth with all of the tools they need to learn tailoring or hairdressing, alongside health education and expert training that they can use to start a business and fight poverty.
“I used to run to save my own life. Now I run to save the lives of others,” - Julius Achon, Co-Founder of the Love Mercy Foundation.
Why Ancient + Brave supports the Love Mercy Foundation
When we discovered Love Mercy through our work with 1% for the Planet network, we immediately recognised a resonance between their mission and the values that drive Ancient + Brave.
As a female-founded wellbeing company, gender inequality is a key issue for us. Love Mercy's work to empower women, helping them thrive and learn, aligns perfectly with our goal to support rural communities by addressing core challenges.
Our impact in Northern Uganda
Our partnership with Love Mercy began with an initial donation of £35,000. This initial community development donation enabled 900 women to enrol in the Cents 4 Seeds program. To date, nearly 7,000 individuals have been positively impacted.
Love Mercy introduced 'Income Generating Activity' groups, creating secondary income sources, such as goat rearing, for times when harvests fall short. We supported the creation of 15 new IGA groups, each consisting of 45 women. We also funded a village well, providing clean water to the community.
The incredible Kristina Health Centre (KHC) offers maternal healthcare in Uganda, including disease testing and inoculation services. Thanks to your shopping, we were able to fund a new NICU corner in the postpartum ward, providing a safe, welcoming space for women and their newborns. We also funded outreach services, enabling medics to reach an additional 300 patients per month in remote villages.
The year of meaningful change. As our brand grew, we were able to support Love Mercy further and pledged £70,000 to the development of a surgical theatre at the KHC. With the nearest hospital 72 km away, the new theatre allows critical interventions to be made on-site, dramatically reducing risks for mothers and babies, saving countless lives.
2025: We then made an additional donation of £116k to support the next stage of KHC development, including an upgraded NICU, an upgraded maternity ward, new patient accommodation, a laboratory, a dental clinic, and a cafeteria for staff and patients. This is critical in Otuke (where KHC is based) as the existing clinics are often closed, understaffed, and lack the equipment needed to deal with emergencies.
Love Mercy x Ancient + Brave: The next chapter
More recently, we donated another £108k, and we have pledged a further £100k, which will be split between KHC, Cents 4 Seeds and the Tailoring Project.
At KHC, donations will help with:
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Supporting over 3,500 operations
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Assisting with 78 births
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Outreach days providing free immunisations
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Antenatal care for 570 women
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Ambulances for 122 emergencies
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Equipment and resources for the new surgical theatre
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New maternity monitors, steam sterilisers, and pulse oximeters.
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We are also actively planning to support new dental equipment, taking the clinic to a level 4 service.
At the Tailoring Project, we’ll be supporting a new cohort of women, creating dignified lives and long-term economic independence in more families.
With Cents 4 Seeds, we’ll be supporting a brand new village with seed distribution, agronomy training, savings groups, and the construction of a new clean water well.
But we don't just provide donations, we also give our time. Our very own Mercy, our ESG executive, visited Uganda in November to witness the incredible impact of the programmes and film a documentary about their work.
Get involved in helping the Love Mercy Foundation
At Ancient + Brave, we’re deeply grateful to our incredible community for shopping with us, helping us to fund sustainable community development in Northern Uganda. Together, we’re making a real difference, empowering women and granting access to healthcare, a right that everyone deserves to have. Thank you for being part of the journey.
If you would like to donate to the Love Mercy Foundation, please click here to see how you can help.
