The idea of the Love and Care Family was first conceived in 1993, but came to be fully realized as a legal entity in 2000. This idea resulted from the need to offer new hope, a home, love and care to the growing number of orphaned children and widowed-single mothers. During the 1990’s, about 15% of Ugandan adults between the ages of 15 and 49 were infected with HIV/AIDS virus. By 1999 8.3 % of adult Ugandans carried the virus, USAID estimates that there are currently 2,364,000 children under the age of 15 who have lost either their mother or their father or, in most cases, both parents to AIDS.

Besides AIDS, Uganda has fallen victim to numerous wars, which have not only left many children orphaned and women widowed, but has also created high poverty levels. A majority of the people live at only survival levels and cannot help to support the extended family structure, a structure that previously offered a hand whenever a relative died and left children and widows. And yet, those fathers and mothers that survived the war abandoned their children because they cannot fully care for them because of poverty or lack of responsibility.

Some women have turned to prostitution as the only way to survive. AIDS and poverty, to a greater extent, have contributed to the large number of orphaned and abandoned children and the culture of single-motherhood.

As a result of this scenario, a number of governmental and non-governmental organizations have sprung up to rescue these children. While orphanages have become homes to orphaned and abandoned children, they only offer a partial solution. The children miss the family-oriented love and care. They are usually looked after by social workers, nurses and attendants, who in a number of cases have orphaned children whom they themselves cannot fully look after. As humans, it is not possible to give love and care to other children when they are not sure of the next meal for their own children.

From this background, Love and Care Family was formed to recreate a Ugandan extended family structure were widowed mothers or single-mothers would be enabled to look after their children and other children who do not have relatives to care for them.