Our Journey Begins: Building a Future Where Lives Are Lifted

This is the last of our first ten articles, so it is a reasonable moment to say where we are and where this goes next.

Where we are

Lift A Life Foundation is a Community Based Organisation registered with the County Government of Kiambu in February 2024. We work in Ruiru. We are small, we are local, and our work is caring for orphans and vulnerable children, the elderly and people living with disabilities, alongside advocacy and community building.

We have no impact figures on this website, and that is deliberate. We took down the ones that were here because nobody had counted them. Figures will appear when they have been counted and can be evidenced, and not before.

That is an unusual foundation for a launch. We think it is a better one than the alternative, which is starting with numbers that cannot survive a question.

What comes next on this site

The real story. How this foundation began belongs to the people who lived it, and we are documenting it properly rather than writing a paragraph that sounds good. It will be published in their own words.

Project journeys. Rather than announcing an outcome once it is finished, we intend to show the work as it happens. A need identified, what was done, what changed, what we got wrong. Dated updates on a single page, so anyone can follow a piece of work from beginning to end.

Stories, with permission. Some of the families we walk with have extraordinary accounts. None will appear here without consent, and where a child is involved, without a guardian's written permission. If a family would rather not be written about, that is the end of it.

Counted figures. As soon as we have numbers we can stand behind, they go here, with the method beside them.

What comes next in the work

More of the same, more reliably. That is the honest answer.

The centres we support need supplies and hands consistently, not occasionally. The families we visit need someone who comes back. The advocacy work needs following through on the fourth phone call rather than the first.

If we grow, we would rather grow in depth than in breadth: knowing the households in Ruiru properly, rather than adding counties we cannot serve well. A foundation that expands faster than its ability to keep promises has stopped being useful.

What we are asking for

Regular support. M-Pesa paybill 400200, account 1151353. A modest standing amount is worth more than a larger unpredictable one, because it lets us commit.

Reliable time. An afternoon a month, on a day you will keep.

Introductions. If you know someone who could help, connect us. It costs a message and it is often the most valuable thing anyone does.

Scrutiny. Ask us hard questions. Ask what your gift did. Ask to see the certificate. An organisation that cannot answer those does not deserve support, and the only way we can prove we are not that is by being asked.

The cycle we are trying to build

Identify a need. Meet it properly. Document what happened, honestly. Tell the story, with permission. Reach more people. Earn trust. Attract support. Do more.

Every part of that depends on the honesty of the part before it. Impact that was not real produces stories that are not true, which produces trust that is not earned, which eventually collapses and takes the work with it.

So we start at the other end. Small, true, verifiable, and built to survive being checked.

Follow the journey

The next articles will not be philosophy. They will be about the actual work: what caring for a child with a disability requires, what older people living alone need beyond food, what vulnerable children need that is not money.

If you would like to be part of it, our get involved page is the place to start. If you would rather watch for a while first, that is fine too. We will be here, doing the ordinary constant work, and writing it down as we go.