Community-led since 1992.

The Mbuntu Foundation is a Canadian charity working with communities in East and Southern Africa and Canada on financial inclusion, water and sanitation, food security and health, through research done with communities, not on them.

Salama SHIELD Foundation seal, 1992
Est.1992
OriginLyantonde, UG
FormerlySalama SHIELD
PresentlyMbuntu Foundation

Our Story

Case history

The Mbuntu Foundation began in 1992 as the Salama SHIELD Foundation, founded by Dr. Dennis Willms in Lyantonde, Uganda. Its early work centred on HIV/AIDS prevention, built on a simple conviction: the people closest to a problem understand it best, and lasting solutions have to be designed with them.

That conviction shaped three decades of participatory research, from traditional healers in Zimbabwe to faith communities in Malawi. In Harare, the foundation began applying the ideas now realized as the Mbuntu Method: conceptual events that bring communities, researchers and institutions to the same table.

Today that method guides programs in microfinance, WASH, food security and health in Uganda and Malawi, and new work with diaspora women's savings groups in Canada.

From Salama SHIELD to Mbuntu

For more than thirty years the foundation worked under the Salama SHIELD name. In 2026 it was revitalized as the Mbuntu Foundation, carrying the same commitment to community-led work into new programs, new partnerships and a growing focus on financial inclusion.

The original seal, with its map of Africa and Canadian maple leaf, still marks where we came from: a partnership between Canada and the communities we serve.

The history of Salama SHIELD remains foundational to the future of the Mbuntu Foundation.

From the Field

Photographs, 1992 – 2026
  • Women in Mbuntu Foundation shirts seated on a mat at a group meeting, 20262026
  • Partners outside the offices of Friends Sickle Cell Foundation Uganda, 20262026
  • A facilitator speaking to a women's group in Mbuntu Foundation shirts, 20262026
  • Young people gathered around a water pump, 19921992
  • Staff and partners gathered outside a building, 20212021
  • A woman holding a bottled product in a field, 20202020
  • A young man carrying two goats on his shoulders, 20062006
  • Students in a classroom, 19991999
  • Young men in red shirts standing in a line, 20062006
  • A smiling woman in a patterned headwrap, 20202020
  • Village homes at dusk, 20042004
  • Two men working at a roadside workshop, 20192019

Salama SHIELD / Mbuntu Foundation archive.

What Guides Us

Principles
  1. 01
    Community-led

    Communities set the agenda. We work alongside them, not on their behalf.

  2. 02
    Research with, not on

    Participatory research that treats local knowledge as evidence.

  3. 03
    The Mbuntu Method →

    Derived from conceptual events: bringing communities, researchers and institutions to the same table to design solutions together.

  4. 04
    Learning that travels both ways

    Working in Canada and our own communities to encourage Western adoption of Global South ideas, from communal economics to farming as a family business.

What We Do

Index

Board of Directors

The Foundation is governed by a board drawing on decades of experience in academic research, international development and public health.

  • Dennis G. WillmsPh.D.

    Founding Director & CEO

    Associate Professor (ret.)McMaster University

  • Bruce ScottM.A.

    Director

    Consultant and DirectorNairobi-based agroforestry research institutes

  • Justin StudentM.A.

    Director

    Instructional Designer, MedIT Educational Technology UnitUniversity of British Columbia

  • Jason TheedeM.P.H.

    Director

    Senior Specialist, Labour Mobility & Human DevelopmentIOM – UN Migration Agency