comm-UNITY! | Season 14 | Episode 10 | Equalising the Odds

At the Gathering of Givers 2024, David Lambert Tumwesigye introduced himself with a grin: “I’m a middle-aged man. Where is the middle of age? Right center.” The joke lands, but what follows is anything but light. He sketches a life shaped by sacrifice and lucky breaks, evidence that generosity isn’t window dressing; it’s load bearing.

He grew up in a warm rural community better known, he teases, for its hot springs than its headlines. The heat that changed his family’s fortunes, however, was human. His father’s trajectory bent because an uncle, Eliezan Kabir, paid school fees through primary; when that support ended and school stopped, an education officer noticed a bright boy out of class, intervened, and helped him return. One act of generosity, then another; a chain reaction that turned obstacles into on-ramps. “We are who we are because people made sacrifices, and because we were lucky,” Tumwesigye says, and you can hear both gratitude and resolve in it.

That conviction became his compass in social protection work. While advocating for the Senior Citizens Grant, he often met polished versions of the same objection: we can’t afford it. He answered with a straight face and a sharp edge, if we can fund bridges and big buildings, we can also fund dignity. He noticed something else too: many of the people now calling grants “uneconomical” once relied on public bursaries to cross their own bridges. Memory, he suggests gently, is a public good.

His own turning point came at NSSF when a managing director slid a stack of papers across the desk, an International Labour Office scholarship for advanced study in social protection financing. “If it interests you, come back,” the MD said. Tumwesigye went back, and that single opportunity set the arc of three decades. Someone passed a ladder instead of a lecture; he has been paying that gesture forward ever since.

Through friends he describes as “among the most generous I know,” he helped produce the Gathering of Givers, bringing not only time but tools. Often, he says, what’s missing isn’t money so much as intent: decide to put what you already have at people’s disposal and watch capacity multiply. The satisfaction of giving, in his experience, routinely outpaces the applause of receiving.

Ask him about young people and his cadence quickens. He will not accept the lazy myth that youth are “not ready.” He sees imagination, generosity, and problem-solving waiting for oxygen. Give them oxygen, opportunity, challenge, trust, and they will out-invent our problems. His aim is simple and stubborn: equalise life chances so luck isn’t the loudest variable.

Tumwesigye is not allergic to complexity; he is allergic to using complexity as an alibi. Generosity, in his framing, is disciplined, measurable, nation-shaping. It is the difference between a state that counts bridges and a society that also counts the people who cross them. A little goes a long way, sometimes all the way to a life that turns around and lifts others.

Quotable quotes:

• “We are who we are because people made sacrifices, and because we were lucky.”

• “If you can afford bridges and big buildings, you can afford dignity.”

• “Even the most affluent Ugandans made it because government once believed in bursaries.”

• “The satisfaction you get from giving is often greater than the one who receives.”

• “Young people are super imaginative and very generous. Give them a chance and they’ll out-invent our problems.”

• “Equalise life chances, that’s the work.”

• “Generosity is not a line item; it’s an inheritance.”

• “A little goes a long way, literally.”

🎧Click Here To Listen To His Story:

Courtesy: ⁠Qweshunga⁠ and ⁠Media Challenge Initiative⁠ and ⁠CivLegacy Foundation ⁠ and ⁠CivSourceAfrica⁠

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