This short film introduces Ride 4 A Woman — a nonprofit community centre founded by Eve Habasa near Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in south-western Uganda. It shows the women at work through cooking, weaving, sewing, and dance, and explains how a program that began with a bicycle repair shop has grown into a community hub supporting 300 women from 11 villages through micro finance, employment, safe water, and children’s education.

Empowering Women Near Bwindi

Ride 4 A Woman runs one of the most comprehensive women’s empowerment program near any national park in East Africa. Sixty women come to the R4W centre every day to work, learn, and find a place of safety and support. The micro finance program has funded over 100 women-led businesses — restaurants, sewing centers, boutiques, and market stalls. Beyond micro finance, R4W provides agricultural support, a goats savings program, home construction, solar lighting, safe water access, and children’s school sponsorship. Each program addresses a specific barrier that keeps women in poverty — and together they form a model of community development directly funded by ecotourism.

What Travelers Experience

A visit to Ride 4 A Woman is unlike anything else on a Uganda safari itinerary. Travelers on Deeper Africa’s Wildlife of Uganda safari can join the women at the community centre — cooking traditional Ugandan dishes, trying basket weaving, and joining a Bakiga dance session that has become one of the most joyful moments any traveler takes home from Uganda. Every purchase, every meal, every activity fee goes directly back to the program. This is not a performance for tourists — it is a working community centre that welcomes visitors as participants, not observers.

The Gorilla Trekking Connection

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest is home to roughly half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas — the primary reason most travelers come to south-western Uganda. Ride 4 A Woman sits at the intersection of the two most compelling reasons to visit: the wildlife experience and the human story. R4W’s work — creating economic opportunity, funding schools, providing safe water — gives the communities on the edge of Bwindi a concrete reason to protect the forest. A Deeper Africa Uganda safari that includes both gorilla trekking and a visit to R4W is not two separate experiences. It is one story.

How Your Deeper Africa Safari Supports R4W

Travelers on Deeper Africa’s Wildlife of Uganda safari visit the Ride 4 A Woman community centre near Bwindi as part of their itinerary. Every booking contributes to the ecotourism revenue that makes R4W’s programs possible — the micro finance loans, the children’s sponsorships, the safe water access, and the daily employment of 60 women. When you travel with Deeper Africa to Uganda, your safari funds the livelihoods, the schools, and the futures of the women living alongside the gorillas you come to see.