Tackling the cycle of poverty in Western Kenya
by Scarlett Bowcott, Bradfield College
In the 23 years since its formation, the Nasio Trust has made significant strides towards breaking the cycle of poverty in Western Kenya by providing education, healthcare and roads to employment. Scarlett Bowcott met the charity’s Rachel Dodimead to find out how Nasio is changing lives for good.
The Nasio Trust works in Mumias, a small community in Kakamega County, Western Kenya, where poverty is above 33% and people survive on less than a dollar a day. The region is Kenya’s breadbasket but is rife with cultural issues that prevent families from accessing education, healthcare, and diverse sources of income.
A UK-registered charity, Nasio operates from just over the county border in Abingdon, as well as on the ground in Kenya. It aims to empower people to overcome the poverty trap through access to education, lifesaving healthcare and opportunities for income-generation, ensuring families can continue to support their children through school and pay their medical bills, thereby creating sustainable communities and improving lives.
Nasio is named after its founder, Irene Mudenyo, nèe Nasio, who in 2000 came across a tiny baby boy abandoned in a sugarcane plantation on her farm at Musanda. The child was malnourished and needed urgent medical help, and after attempts to find his parents failed, Irene decided to name him Moses and raise him herself. The arrival of Moses exposed the reality of poverty and the prevalence of HIV in the Mumias area and spurred Irene and her family into action. They opened a local feeding hut for orphaned and vulnerable children and Irene’s youngest daughter Nancy established the Nasio Trust to begin fundraising in the UK and give these children a chance in life.
I began my interview by asking what causes the cycle of poverty and how many people Nasio supports in Kakamega?
Rachel Dodimead: “In Western Kenya 75% the income comes from agriculture and farming. Communities already lack the resources to pay for their most basic needs, and climate change is further increasing poverty - triggering competition for food, reducing rural income and increasing infant mortality, among other issues. In 2023, the Trust supported 30,000 people either through access to schools, better healthcare or by gaining sustainable employment.”
Nasio is supporting over 330 children at Noah’s Ark and St Irene’s, your two Early Learning Development Centres - how?
RD: “We believe that children are better supported growing up in a family than in an institution isolated from their community. We find guardians for each of the orphans in our care, so they have a parent-figure as well as an extended network in the community. Our Early Childhood Development Centres support the guardians by providing a daily meal, pre-primary education and medical care to the children.”
Does corruption make your job harder?
RD: “In Kenya, all children have state-funded primary school, but it’s estimated that around 40% of the country’s public spending is estimated to be lost to corruption. It’s no secret that corruption is widespread in Kenya, and this makes our role so much more important as we must fill an even bigger gap.”
Much of your work involves supporting young mothers and their babies to improve child heath. How big an issue is malnutrition?
RD: “Malnutrition is a long-term challenge that is crucial in promoting children’s health. One of the ways we are tackling this is through our Porridge Kitchen, which was established last year as a lifeline providing mothers and young children with essential nutrients. At weekly sessions children are weighed and monitored and fed with nutrient- enriched porridge containing spirulina from the Nasio’s own farm, which is packed with vitamins and minerals. The sessions rotate to different homes and have evolved into a strong support network among mothers, who share parenting advice and tips. Currently, our Porridge Kitchen supports 34 children and 33 mothers.”
What else do you do to empower women?
RD: “In Kenya, inequality between the sexes is massive, so empowering women is a huge part of what we do. Encouraging girls to go back to school and finish their education is key – as is reducing teenage pregnancies. In 2023 we distributed over 3,000 condoms through our outreach activities to give young people access to safe contraception. Since 2021, the programme has reduced teenage pregnancies by 60% in our partner schools.”
“We also have projects dedicated to women, such as our rehabilitation programme – an income generating scheme that enables vulnerable women to earn a living by producing and selling soap and low-cost spectacles. Some 84 women work on the project, earning a stable income and reinvesting part of their pay back into the programme.”
Is it still import to introduce the younger generation to the farming industry?
RD: “When you live in a country where 33% of the GDP is dependent on the agricultural sector, young people need to learn about agriculture and how to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. We run Young Farmers Clubs in schools, where 128 young people have been trained to set up their own kitchen gardens to grow vegetables. We also have our own kitchen gardens at Noah’s Ark and St Irene’s to help supplement the meals we provide. We spend a lot of time teaching children about new farming techniques such as composting, crop rotation and agroforestry. The idea is that they learn, then go home and educate their community.”
Are you introducing Nasio children to other industries?
RD: “We don’t just support children in traditional industries, because through their school education they also learn other skills. We’ve seen Nasio children go to university and become doctors and accountants - so you see we are empowering them to achieve as much as they can.”
What is your Peer Education Programme?
RD: “This is a youth-led, peer-to-peer sexual and reproductive health programme. Aimed at young people aged 12-24, it raises awareness of HIV, STIs, and teenage pregnancy, and removes any stigma. The community where we work has the second highest number of teenage pregnancies in Kenya and around 5% HIV positivity – so it’s vital to equip the next generation with the knowledge to address their health needs. So far, the programme has trained 466 peer educators, tested over 100 people for HIV and reached a total of 3,700 people.”
Can Kenya return to its former glory through the achievements of its young people?
RD: “The size of the young population in Kenya is huge. If younger people can be educated and empowered, this will give them the skills and resources to make the necessary changes that their parents weren’t able to make. Education here is the key, and it will take time, but they are getting there slowly.”
Do people in the western world find it hard to identify with the levels of poverty in countries like Kenya?
RD: “When we’re used to living in affluent bubbles, most of us do find it hard to envisage extreme poverty. But it’s not enough to simply ‘know’ that communities are living in poverty, that people are suffering from HIV and that babies are dying of infant illnesses. How to get people fully engaged is a major challenge in the work we do.”
Do you think you will expand your work to other parts of Kenya?
RD: “Our CEO Nancy Hunt grew up in the Mumias community where we work. That’s where our core roots are, and where we will always be based. Whilst we are constantly talking to other charities and other partnerships on a broader scale, there is still so much work to be done in our own community, so this will remain our primary focus.”
What would the ultimate success of your work look like?
RD: “To break the cycle of poverty. But what that success means on a day-to-day level might be… preventing a teenage pregnancy so a young girl can finish her education, go to university and get a good job ... or someone having access to health treatment for an illness that may otherwise have caused an early death …. or a young man learning new agricultural skills to protect his crops, earn an income and feed his family. These are all day-to-day successes that contribute to our ultimate goal of breaking the cycle of poverty.”
How can people in the UK get involved with the Nasio Trust?
RD: “There are many ways people can help. Many of our suppporters sponsor a child. Sponsoring a child gives our beneficiaries support in the form of healthcare and education. Others join our volunteering programme for young people in the UK, which culminates in a visit to Kenya to help at our projects. There is also a family volunteering scheme, which is a fantastic way to teach children about the world. Whichever way you choose to help the Nasio Trust, however small your contribution, it will go a long way to helping us achieve our goal of changing lives for good.”
