FOCAGIFO Hope Institute was born from one man's decision to replace fear with compassion.

In 1991, Gideon Byamugisha lost his wife Kellen before either of them knew they were living with HIV. Faced with grief and his own diagnosis, he made a decision that would shape thousands of lives: in 1992, he became the first religious leader in Africa to publicly disclose his HIV-positive status, choosing honesty over silence.

What followed was a decade of tireless advocacy — speaking to congregations, communities, and international audiences throughout the 1990s about dignity, disclosure, and compassion in the face of HIV. That work earned him the World Vision Award (USA), and Gideon used the $5,000 prize to buy the land that would become FOCAGIFO's first Training Institute and Vocational School. By the early 2000s, a growing network of peers and advisors encouraged him to formally name the organization he'd built — and in true Ugandan fashion, they settled on Friends of Canon Gideon Foundation, known to everyone simply as FOCAGIFO.

That decision, and the years of work behind it, grew into a movement — a center for education, public health, leadership development, and community partnership serving thousands of Ugandans today.