GRILLECOMMUNITYJoin us
OUR STORY
It started
around a fire.
Long before GRILLE became an organisation, it was simply people finding one another.
01 · FINDING ONE ANOTHER
A familiar language.
An immediate connection.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of us were beginning new lives in the UK. We arrived in different cities, often knowing very few people and sometimes experiencing the loneliness that comes with being far from home, family, familiar languages and culture.
Finding someone from home meant something.
At work, at a gathering or even across a crowded nightclub, hearing someone speaking Luganda, Swahili, Lusoga, Kinyarwanda or another familiar East African language could immediately create a connection. A conversation would begin. Someone knew someone else. Telephone numbers were exchanged. Friendships formed.
Slowly, we began finding one another.
02 · FROM STRANGERS TO COMMUNITY
People opened
their homes.
Those friendships soon moved into people’s homes.
Families and individuals opened their doors for birthdays, celebrations, food and informal gatherings. Homes in Derby, Sheffield and other cities became places where people could meet, laugh, share stories and spend time with others who understood something of where they had come from.
Among those who opened their homes in those early years were Miss Maggie Kamya and Mr and Mrs Kaweesa in Derby, Mr and Mrs Majoro in Sheffield, and many others whose hospitality helped create the connections from which this community grew.
03 · THEN CAME THE FIRE
British winters changed
how we gathered.
During warmer months, people could travel, visit larger cities or spend more time outdoors. In winter, our gatherings increasingly happened at people’s homes.
When there were more people than could comfortably fit inside, we gathered outside. We lit fires.
Around those fires there was food. There was meat on the barbecue. There were drinks, laughter, music and long conversations that sometimes continued until four or five in the morning.
The fire kept us warm, but something else was happening around it. People were sharing stories. Friendships were deepening. New arrivals were meeting people who had been here longer. Languages, memories and experiences from home were being rediscovered thousands of miles away.
We were grilling.
And somewhere within those gatherings, GRILLE, deliberately written with an E, began to take on a meaning of its own.
The grill was where the food was prepared.The fire was where we gathered.But GRILLE became the people around it.04 · MORE THAN A NAME
The meaning
we carry forward.
That history is why the fire remains at the heart of GRILLE today.
It represents warmth when you are far from home. It represents the conversation that begins when strangers discover something they share. It represents hospitality, food, language, culture and friendship.
Most importantly, it represents belonging.
What began around fires in people’s homes was never intended to become an organisation. It was simply a community finding itself.
More than two decades later, that same idea remains at the heart of GRILLE Community.
05 · FROM GATHERING TO COMMUNITY
The circle
grew.
Over the years, the friendships formed around those early gatherings grew into something more recognisable as a community.
Across Derby, Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham, Leeds and Coventry, people increasingly knew one another. Birthdays, family celebrations, barbecues and other gatherings brought together people who lived in different cities but shared friendships, culture and connections.
There was still no formal organisation. But there was now a network. People travelled between cities. Families became connected. Children grew up knowing other families within the community. GRILLE was gradually becoming bigger than the individual gatherings from which it had begun.
From homes to organised gatherings
As those relationships strengthened, what had largely taken place in people’s homes began to include larger, more organised social occasions.
On 10 February 2018, the first GRILLE White Party marked an important transition. Made possible through the early support and sponsorship of Miss Judith Nahurira of WECARE24 Medical Services Limited, it moved the community from individual celebrations towards an event deliberately bringing the wider network together.
We were gathering to celebrate us.
06 · WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED
The fire
went digital.
The arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 separated a community that had been built through being physically together.
People were isolated from friends and extended family. Travel became impossible. Returning home to Uganda or elsewhere in East Africa was no longer an option. Families stayed within their households, while many members of our community worked on the frontline, particularly in health and care services. Some became ill, some experienced COVID within their families and communities, and everyone lived with uncertainty.
The very thing that had helped build GRILLE, gathering together, was suddenly impossible. But the gathering did not stop.
Together, at a distance
Technology gave us another way of finding one another. Instead of everybody gathering around one fire, fires were lit in different homes. Families sat around their own fires or barbecues while connecting virtually with friends elsewhere. We talked, laughed and shared what we were experiencing.
Those virtual conversations also planted an idea for spaces where community members can talk, tell stories, exchange experiences and learn from one another. That legacy will continue through planned GRILLE Community Conversations and podcast activities.
07 · COMING TOGETHER AGAIN
A community for
every season.
When restrictions eased and people could finally meet again, gathering carried a different meaning.
In 2021, with support from sponsors and community members, GRILLE held its first Gala in Derby. After months of separation, people could sit together, celebrate together and reconnect with friends they had largely seen through screens. The gatherings continued in the years that followed, developing into the GRILLE events and celebrations our community knows today.
Good times and difficult times
GRILLE had never existed only for parties. The same people who gathered for birthdays, weddings, confirmations, anniversaries and other milestones also came together when someone was bereaved or a family was experiencing difficulty.
When a member lost someone in Uganda or elsewhere, people rallied around them. They visited, contributed, comforted one another and helped families navigate moments when being thousands of miles from home could make loss even harder.
We gathered in celebration. We gathered in loss.
We showed up for one another.
Despite being spread across the East Midlands, West Midlands, Yorkshire, London and increasingly other parts of the United Kingdom, those relationships continued to connect us. GRILLE was no longer simply a collection of gatherings. It had become a community.
08 · FROM COMMUNITY TO CIC
Building something
that could last.
By 2026, GRILLE had travelled a long way from those early gatherings around fires in people’s homes. Friendship had grown into a community connecting individuals and families across different UK cities. We had celebrated together, supported one another through bereavement and difficult times, created events, built relationships and watched another generation grow within the community.
For many years, an informal structure had worked. People contributed their time, opened their homes, organised gatherings and helped one another because that was what community meant. But the community’s needs and ambitions were changing.
From connection to purpose
How could we better support families experiencing bereavement?
How could we strengthen financial awareness and informed decision-making?
How could we connect entrepreneurs, professionals and businesses?
How could we create opportunities for skills, careers and mentoring?
How could we support health, well-being and stronger social connections?
How could children growing up in the UK remain connected to language, culture, heritage, identity and home?
These were bigger responsibilities than an occasional gathering or annual event could carry. GRILLE needed to evolve.
Becoming GRILLE Community CIC
In 2026, the community established GRILLE Community CIC in the United Kingdom. The new structure created a formal foundation for organising activities, developing programmes, building partnerships and pursuing initiatives designed to provide lasting community benefit.
We moved from an informal network built around relationships to an organisation capable of turning those relationships into community action.
The gatherings, celebrations and friendships did not disappear. They remain part of who we are. The structure has changed, the community has grown and the purpose has become bigger. But the fire remains the same.
OUR STORY CONTINUES
The same fire.
A bigger purpose.
GRILLE Community CIC is not the beginning of our story. It is the next chapter of a story that began when people far from home found one another, opened their doors, shared their food, spoke familiar languages and gathered around a fire. What began as a way of finding belonging has become an opportunity to build it for others and for the generations that follow.
Gathered by Culture. United by Community.See what guides us