Our Work
The Lela Initiative is a not-for-profit organisation supporting underprivileged communities on the Ssese Islands in Uganda.
Our vision is to bring joy, hope and empowerment through free access to books and community education opportunities.
Based out of Kalangala, our local Ugandan team knows what their community needs most. To date, this has included:
Transforming a shell of a building into a community library
Filling the library with educational textbooks to support local school children
Providing story time opportunities for a local preschool
Running a drop-in session, in conjunction with the health team, for parents and children
Facilitating a monthly women’s health session
Hosting sexual education courses
Our UK team raises the profile of the organisation by publishing books in the UK and through our Twinning project.
Our History
“It was a trigger of childhood memories that prompted me to not forget where I came from…”
Born in Uganda, our founder, Lela Burbridge spent her formative years living in unimaginable poverty in the slums of Kampala. She fell in love with reading at Sunday School but could not afford to buy her own books, and there were no libraries she could access.
Fast forward to 2018, now living in the UK, Lela wrote her memoir, ‘Ashes of Childhood.’ Not forgetting what stories meant to her as a child, Lela used the profits from her book to fund a mobile library reading to children living in her former slum. The project was so popular that it led to the formation of The Lela Initiative.
The Lela Initiative has always had a vision to provide access to books and education to the most needy in Uganda. After a successful pilot project refurbishing a rural school library in Kasaala, Lela visited Kalangala and met Solomon.
Solomon shared his dream of having a series of community libraries to provide books and education spaces to serve the 84 Ssese Islands. The first of these, Sinyaland Centre Library, was built in 2025 and has been providing textbooks for school children, story time visits for preschoolers and health education for women and children.
The dream is to see more community libraries built on the larger islands, to have a boat provide a floating library service for those living on the smaller islands, to support public health initiatives, and to facilitate IT education and internet access.
Our Team
Lela - UK
Sarah - UK
Andrew - UK
Dee - Uganda
Suzy - UK
Solomon - Uganda