Clothes don’t fill empty stomachs: aid must begin with what people want and need

In early September 2025, in Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement, Kamwenge district, South Western Uganda and home to 103,790 refugees, an aid agency arrived with what seemed like a gift of dignity: brand-new clothes for every refugee household. On paper, it looked like compassion in action. In reality, the scene quickly became something else. By the time the last bundles were distributed even on the first day, the roadside was already turning into a market. Piles of clothes were being resold for pennies. Traders from surrounding villages and even distant settlements came to buy bargains. A shirt that might have been procured at great expense could be had for a few thousand Ugandan shillings. Families, still hungry and pressed by medical bills, converted the items into cash as quickly as possible. For many, it was the only way to put food on the table that day. Jenny who herself is a refugee living in Rwamwanja, participated in the clothes distribution exercise and recalled that immediately after receiving their share, almost every family ran straight to the market. Traders waited at the gate, dictating the prices.

‘It was the buyers telling us what they were willing to give, not us setting the price,’ she said. ‘Some women stayed at the distribution centre until evening, begging buyers to take the clothes, while piles of unwanted garments lay along the roads.’

An elderly woman reportedly stood with tears in her eyes, holding a pair of trousers and was quoted saying:

‘For my whole life I have never worn one. Trousers are for town people, not us. I need food, not trousers.’

And others echoed her frustration too: clothes too big for children, men handed women’s skirts, elderly women given blouses they would never wear. Some families took oversized garments directly to tailors who set up makeshift stalls outside the distribution site, cutting and sewing at speed, profiting from the mismatch.

Community leaders who witnessed the exercise described how chaotic it became. People queued from dawn until late afternoon without food or water, only to find that what they received was useless. Some cried. Many walked away angry. Refugee leaders were reportedly called afterwards by aid agency officials scrambling to contain the fallout.

‘They asked us to stop people from selling the clothes but it was too late. If they had asked us before, we could have told them this would happen. They only call when the problem has already exploded.’

The unhappiness was written on people’s faces, Jenny recalls. Some laughed bitterly, saying they had been given baby clothes though they had no babies, or skirts though they had never worn one. Others worried about cultural or religious restrictions:

‘According to our beliefs, some of these clothes we cannot wear,’ Jenny emphasises.

The outcome was inevitable; items were sold at a tiny fraction of their supposed value, often as little as 1% of the price they had been procured for.

Others in the settlement gave their own perspectives. One man who has lived in Rwamwanja since 2012 noted that this was not the first time clothing distributions had disappointed.

‘Eighty percent of what came was for women, only 10% for men, and 10% for children,’ he explained. ‘How can a man wear women’s clothes? Of course, people sold them. People were moving up and down not to find trousers that fit, but to find cash or food.’

He believed the exercise even deepened mistrust:

‘People said the agencies must have bought the cheapest clothes and eaten the money. They saw no shoes and concluded the budget for shoes had been stolen.’

Another refugee, who has spent nine years in Rwamwanja, offered a similar reflection. He had seen many forms of aid – food, cash, soap – that made sense, but clothing was different.

‘Every time, people sell the clothes right away,’ he said. ‘They queue from six in the morning until three in the afternoon without eating, and then go home with something that doesn’t fit. Some staff steal, some favour certain people, and trust is lost. Meanwhile, what people really need – food, medicine, school fees – is forgotten.’

The cost of inappropriate aid

The irony was not lost on anyone. Aid meant to restore dignity turned into a second-hand market. What looked like generosity became a symbol of disconnect. And behind every discarded blouse or pair of trousers lay an invisible chain of costs: procurement contracts, shipping from Europe, storage, trucks, staff salaries, fuel. By the time the items reached the settlement, the money spent was far more than their market value. Refugees selling them for a few coins showed not ingratitude, but clarity: they knew how misaligned the system was, and they knew how to realign it toward survival.

Some families reportedly sold clothes immediately to buy medicine for sick relatives. Others used the money for food. Children wore clothes that had been exchanged for maize flour, not the oversized shirts they had been given. In effect, refugees themselves converted irrelevant aid into the essentials that had been ignored.

‘The first priority for any human being is food,’ Jenny explains. ‘You can wear the same clothes for two days, but can you eat once in two days?’

Others used the little money from resale to buy school books as the new term began. Almost everyone agreed: money would have been far better than receiving ‘funny clothes’ that only created more disappointment.

These testimonies point to the same lesson: aid that begins with assumptions fails. The agencies had not asked what people wanted. They had not included refugee representatives in the planning. They had sent people to purchase items without considering culture, age, size, or priority. And when the project collapsed, they turned back to community leaders to fix the damage. The result was not dignity but frustration, not empowerment but dependence. Jenny’s reaction to this situation sums it up:

‘Sometimes I feel like humanitarian aid is more for reports than for us. They want long success stories, but the impact is zero. If you give me a chicken I cannot eat, better you don’t give me at all. Support should begin with knowing who I am, what I like, what I need. Otherwise, you bring more harm than help.’

Yet within the frustration lies a different possibility. Refugees are not saying they need nothing. They are saying they need to be heard. Again and again, they call for cash, for support to earn incomes, for investments in food, health, education, even energy. One man put it plainly:

‘Nutrition first, then other things.’

Another suggested that if agencies insisted on clothing, they could try a cash-for-clothes model, bringing vendors to the distribution point so that families choose what suits their size, taste, and culture. Others asked for updated data to match distributions to actual households. Above all, they asked for transparency and trust.

Humanitarians must build relationships based on trust

To us, trust is the missing ingredient. Humanitarian aid has grown comfortable delivering packages and writing reports, but less comfortable with building relationships. Yet it is relationships – listening before acting, understanding what really matters – that prevent waste. Recalling what one prominent refugee leader in Rwamwanja told us:

‘Aid must match people’s priorities, not donors’ assumptions. Every mismatch means wasted potential. Money spent on clothes could have saved lives.’

In our work with Cohere, we realised that many challenges our refugee-led partners face require long-term political and relational engagement, not quick project fixes. We shifted from rigid institutional funding to flexible, trust-based support, investing time in proximity, listening and building genuine relationships before anything else. Decisions today increasingly sit with leaders closest to displacement through our ‘Trust Circles’ – showing that thoughtful engagement can only come from trust, not rigid templates.

Cohere’s Trust Circles are geographically based leadership groups made up of community representatives and Cohere team members. Each circle is led by people with lived experience of displacement or deep proximity to the communities we serve. This structure decentralises decision-making, centres local knowledge, and ensures that priorities and solutions are shaped by those closest to the realities on the ground. For example, on one occasion the CEO of Cohere got in touch with a funder who expressed interest in supporting refugee-led sustainable agriculture in Rwamwanja. The CEO, who is a member of the South Western Uganda–DRC–Zimbabwe Trust Circle, brought the request to the circle rather than deciding himself. The circle, which includes refugee leaders and other community voices who live in Rwamwanja, and is led by someone with lived experience of displacement, recommended which initiatives should receive support and proposed appropriate grant amounts based on their day-to-day knowledge and relationships in the community. Granting decisions were made by those closest to the realities on the ground, and the funder was connected directly to Trust Circle members to coordinate the grants.

So, the Rwamwanja dilemma is not just about clothes. It is about an aid system that still struggles to trust the people it claims to serve. The question is not whether refugees need support – they do. The question is whether the sector can let go of its assumptions and start listening. If aid cannot trust people to choose their own trousers, how will it ever trust them to choose their own futures?

Micheal Gumisiriza and Jenny Basika Sabiti are part of Cohere’s South Western Uganda–DRC–Zimbabwe Trust Circle, working alongside refugee-led organisations in these countries, to shift philanthropic power through relationship-based funding and lived, grassroots leadership.