About The Nasio Trust
What We Do
The Nasio Trust is a registered charity based in the UK and Kenya that derives its inspiration and values from the Christian faith, working with and supporting individuals regardless of their beliefs or background. We support orphaned and vulnerable children and empower communities in Kakamega County, Kenya, to break the cycle of poverty and thrive by focusing on three key strands: education, healthcare, and sustainable livelihoods. As a grassroots charity, we work in the heart of the community to identify and meet their needs.
We believe children should not grow up in institutions like orphanages, where they are isolated from society because of poverty, sickness, disease or death of parents. Children should live in a loving family with dignity without being stigmatised by the cause of their vulnerability.
Our projects are closely aligned with UN’s Sustainable Development Goals particularly :
Vision
Empower communities in Kakamega County, Kenya to break the cycle of poverty and thrive
Mission
A grassroots charity that empowers communities to break the cycle of poverty and thrive, through three key strands – Education, Healthcare and Sustainable Livelihoods
Where We Work
The Nasio Trust has been working for the past 21-years in Mumias West Sub-County, Kakamega County, Western Kenya. The region is Kenya’s breadbasket but is rife with cultural issues that prevent communities from accessing education, healthcare, and diverse sources of income. While Nasio only worked in the village of Musanda when it first started, the charity’s reach has since expanded to other villages and sub-counties.
Our Strategy
A key part of the Nasio Trust strategy is sustainability within the Mumias West Sub-County community to ensure people embrace the projects as their own and break the cycle of poverty independently.
The key elements of our strategy in 2023 are to:
Foster Community Ownership and Participation: To ensure that our projects are led and informed by the community we work in so that their lifespan may extend beyond The Nasio Trust’s direct involvement. We aim to achieve this by identifying community leaders who will anchor and mobilise people together as well as by involving the community more closely in project ideation, implementation, and decision-making.
Climate-ready communities: To make the people we work with ready to meet the challenge of climate change and to adopt behaviours that safeguard against it. We have incorporated organic farming techniques into our agricultural programme and will be weaning our supported farmers off of chemical fertilisers completely by the next two sowing seasons. Additionally, our new focus will be on regenerative agriculture to improve the fertility of the soil through the introduction of agroforestry, better composting techniques, and minimum tillage techniques.
Prioritising social and behavioural changes: To empower the community to overcome the barriers to the uptake of new knowledge and to convert it into local action. Our thrust will be focused on the sensitisation of a diverse cross-section of the community. We will particularly enact this in the case of the Peer Education Programme to sensitise the whole community regarding safe sex.
Becoming economically self-sustained: To work towards making the charity’s income-generating projects self-contained and profit-making so that it has a consistent source of funds. We are working towards widening the markets we sell our products like honey and spirulina in, while finding innovative ways of reducing our production costs.
