Initiative
Community Care Circles
Neighbourhood groups that meet regularly to share resources, support vulnerable households and keep mutual aid alive at the street level.
Modern life often rests on two great pillars: the State and the Market. Yet there is a third, quieter pillar that holds everything together when the other two falter. It is the community itself. The neighbourhood. The congregation. The cooperative. The village. We treat this third pillar as sacred.
“The community has been ignored, even as the state and markets have grown more powerful. Yet without strong communities, neither democracy nor capitalism can survive in a balanced and humane form.”
Raghuram G. Rajan
Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, author of The Third Pillar.
These three words are not slogans. They are the measurable qualities we look for when we decide whether a community is ready to hold its own future.
Local institutions, governed locally, trusted locally. We strengthen the formal and informal structures that give a community its backbone.
Communities that can weather drought, conflict, economic shock and disease without losing their identity, cohesion or hope.
Initiatives funded, managed and renewed by the community itself so that progress does not depend on the next donor cycle.
Every initiative below is designed alongside the people it serves, not delivered to them.
Neighbourhood groups that meet regularly to share resources, support vulnerable households and keep mutual aid alive at the street level.
Training for local committees, cooperatives and faith councils so communities can manage their own budgets, assets and priorities with confidence.
Agroecology, water harvesting and climate adaptation programmes designed and owned by the communities who live with the land every day.
Safe spaces where young people learn technology, connect with markets and build the skills that keep their communities in step with a changing world.
Mentorship bridges between elders and youth, preserving cultural knowledge while seeding innovation for the challenges ahead.
Each operational city is mapped into the regional framework we publish on the Financial Accountability page, so every shilling reaching the field can be traced back to a region, a hub and a named local partner.
Mama Wanjiru Karanja
Lead Convenor, Nairobi Care Circles
A former primary school head who turned a sewing cooperative into the city's largest community-run savings and mediation network. Holds the trust of 217 estate elders.
To federate Nairobi's estate elders into a single, transparent civic body that defends dignity, mediates disputes and stewards local savings for the next generation.
Eastlands Coordination Hub, Mumias South Road, Buruburu, Nairobi
Solid bar — actual. Dashed marker — annual target.
Estate-level care circles federated under a city assembly. Every shilling raised in Nairobi is matched by diaspora-Kenyan donors and disbursed through a public ledger reviewed quarterly by the assembly.
Adebayo Ogundipe
Director, Lagos Youth Enterprise Trust
An apprentice-trained electrician turned social entrepreneur who built West Africa's most cited youth-to-trade pipeline. Sits on the federal youth employment council.
To move one thousand Lagos youth a year from informal hustle into dignified, formally-contracted trades while restoring the waterfront that raised them.
Yaba Digital & Livelihoods Hub, Herbert Macaulay Way, Yaba, Lagos
Solid bar — actual. Dashed marker — annual target.
A waterfront cooperative model: micro-enterprise grants paired with mangrove restoration contracts so livelihoods and coastline are repaired in the same season.
Rev. Grace Lado
Convenor, Inter-Boma Peace Council
A Bari-speaking pastor who has mediated 41 inter-clan disputes since 2021. Trusted entry point for households the formal aid system cannot reach.
To anchor every grain of food and every litre of water to a peace dialogue, so that material aid in Juba never travels without the relational repair it requires.
Juba Peace & Provision Field Office, Ministries Road, Juba
Solid bar — actual. Dashed marker — annual target.
Conflict-sensitive cash-plus: every food and water disbursement is anchored to a peace dialogue convened by elders, so material aid never travels without the relational repair it requires.
Dr. Yasmine El-Sharif
Chair, Cairo Urban Regeneration Circle
An urban planner and former UN-Habitat fellow who convenes 38 informal-settlement committees. Co-author of Cairo's first community-led sanitation atlas.
To make every informal settlement in Greater Cairo the co-author of its own three-year plan for water, waste and rooftop energy, ratified street by street.
Maadi Civic Partnerships Office, Road 9, Maadi, Cairo
Solid bar — actual. Dashed marker — annual target.
A street-by-street improvement compact: residents co-author a three-year plan for water, waste and rooftop solar, and the foundation underwrites only what the committee itself signs off on.
Karim Ben Salah
Coordinator, Maghreb Civic Lab
A constitutional lawyer who left a Tunis-based think tank to organise neighbourhood assemblies in the city's outer rings. Translator of community charters into Arabic, French and Tamazight.
To make the neighbourhood charter, not the grant, the project — releasing recurring civic funds only when a community ratifies its own compact in open assembly.
Tunis Mediterranean Coordination Office, Avenue Mohamed V, Tunis
Solid bar — actual. Dashed marker — annual target.
Civic-assembly grants: small, recurring funds released only when a neighbourhood charter is ratified in open assembly. The charter, not the grant, is the project.
Mapping verified against the regional ledger published in our latest stewardship report.
We do not measure our work in our own achievements. We measure it in what stays standing once we step back.
A pastoralist community of nine villages co-designed a solar borehole and a water management committee. Five years on, the committee still meets every fortnight, the tariff fund has paid for two repairs without outside help, and girls who once walked six hours for water now sit in classrooms instead.
9
Villages stewarding the well
62%
Rise in girls' school attendance
A circle of forty-seven women, many of them survivors of conflict, built a savings cooperative and a peace dialogue forum from the same kitchen table. They now hold a quarter-million-shilling rotating fund and have mediated thirty-one land disputes that the courts could not reach.
47
Women holding the cooperative
31
Land disputes peacefully resolved
Three farming villages adopted terraced agroforestry on land that had been written off as exhausted. Yields have doubled, soil carbon is measurably rising, and the local seed bank, run entirely by farmers, now supplies seventeen neighbouring hamlets.
2x
Increase in staple crop yields
17
Hamlets served by the seed bank
A youth collective turned a disused community hall into a digital inclusion hub. Two hundred and forty young people have completed the programme, eighty-three are now in paid technology work, and the hub funds itself through a member-owned coworking model.
240
Young people trained
83
In paid technology work
Names of individuals withheld at community request. Figures verified in our annual stewardship report.
Whether you are a donor, a practitioner, a researcher or a community leader yourself, there is a place for you in this work. We do not arrive with answers. We arrive with humility, resources and a long term commitment to walk together.
840+
Communities Engaged
34
Countries
12K
Local Leaders Trained
94%
Community Retention