How Your Support Can Help Create Real Impact

People usually want to know one thing before giving: what will actually happen to this. Here is the answer, without the language charities normally use to avoid it.

What your support pays for

Supplies for families and centres. Flour, rice, cooking oil, soap, detergent, sanitary towels, tissue. This is the bulk of what we deliver, and it is deliberately practical. A household that cannot buy soap is not a household with a soap problem. It is a household where money ran out, and the shortage shows up in health, in school attendance and in dignity.

Getting there. Fuel, transport hire, phone credit. Nobody sponsors these and everything depends on them. A donation of supplies is worth nothing sitting in a store because there is no way to move it.

Support to existing centres. There are people in Ruiru who have cared for children with severe disabilities for years on almost nothing. They do not need instruction. They need supplies and hands.

Following things up. Advocacy is mostly forms, phone calls and going back a fourth time. It is the least photogenic thing we do and often the most valuable, because support a family is entitled to is worth more than support we can give.

What we will not tell you

We will not tell you that a specific amount produces a specific outcome. This site used to say a set sum kept a child in school for a month. It was invented, and it was in dollars.

The truthful version is less satisfying. Costs vary by household, by month, and by what a family already has. Anyone who gives you a neat conversion rate between money and outcomes is either estimating or guessing, and it is worth knowing which.

What we will do is tell you specifically what your gift did after it has been spent. That is a smaller promise than a cost-per-child figure and considerably more reliable.

Regular beats large

If you take one practical point from this, take this one.

A standing monthly gift, however modest, is worth more to us than a larger unpredictable one. It lets us tell a centre what they can count on. It lets us promise a family we will be back, and keep the promise. Predictability is what turns charity into care.

The same holds for time. Someone who visits one household on the first Saturday of every month changes that household more than someone who gives a whole weekend once.

The ways to help, ranked honestly

1. Regular money. M-Pesa paybill 400200, account 1151353. Set a modest amount you will not notice missing and keep it going. Bank details are on the donate page.

2. Regular time. Hands at mealtimes, home visits, sorting and carrying supplies. Reliability matters more than hours. Our get involved page explains.

3. Goods, if you handle them anyway. Businesses distributing food, soap or sanitary products can give stock at wholesale cost that is worth retail to us.

4. Professional skills. Bookkeeping, physiotherapy, nursing, special-needs teaching, legal help. Things we could not otherwise afford at all.

5. Introductions. Connecting us to someone who can help costs you a message. It is regularly the most valuable thing anyone does.

6. Sharing this work. Telling people it exists, without turning anyone's hardship into content.

Tell us it was you

One practical request. M-Pesa and bank transfers arrive without telling us who sent them or how to say thank you.

If you give, send us a short message with your name and the amount, on WhatsApp or through the contact form. We will acknowledge it and keep you updated on what it went to. It also means that when we say we will tell you specifically what your gift did, we can actually find you to do it.

If you would rather see first

That is entirely reasonable, and we would encourage it. Ask to see the registration certificate. Ask who the officials are. Ask to visit.

Anyone considering giving to a foundation in Kenya has good reason to be careful. The only sensible answer to that caution is to be checkable, which is why our registration number, our officials and our accounts are all published or available on request.