Welcome from the CEO

(With photo to the right)

Welcome to this space with Community Aid International (CAI)! On behalf of our leaders and staff members, I would like to thank you for visiting to know about and interact with us here. We are grateful that we have done and achieved so much because of the concern and support from you and many other people around the world.

I have been with CAI for a while now as its leader, contributing in my humble way to where it is and what it has achieved. I consider it a great privilege granted by Almighty God that through my leadership CAI has contributed to and impacted lives in Kenya and several other countries including 10 in east and central African, and also in Rome in Italy. I also thank Him for the personal and professional experiences He led me through and prepared me for this service.

I am working in this organization as the ultimate fort after passing through services as an officer in the Government of Kenya, journalist with a leading Kenyan newspaper, public relations manager at Kenyatta National Hospital, programme officer with several NGOs and regional training officer at UN. Now I know God walked me through all those places to gather professional experience and make contacts and networks that are most useful in my work here today.

A journalist recently asked me how come in other previous jobs I was taking not more than two years and yet I have been on this one for well over 20 years. My answer is simple: when I came to the NGO sector, I felt I landed, I arrived home. Probably my passion for this work is attributed to my personality, upbringing and education background. Nothing is more fulfilling to me like work that practically impacts and transforms people’s lives and society.

I was born in abject poverty. At one time we were homeless after the only old dilapidated hut we had almost crushed me to death in a stormy rain. My father died when I was in class three and was brought up by a mother who had to work long and many hours tiling the land to be able to produce enough for us to eat, get surplus to sell for school fees for me and other siblings, and to provide for other needs of the family. When I finished university my mother told me that now that I had reached a stage where I was able to help and be depended on, I should know that God not only gave me over to her as a blessing to the family but also a blessing to our immediate community and beyond.

For me, providing leadership in an organization that works with communities to contribute to transforming society is the most rewarding thing above all. Each one of us can just do our bits and it will add to the bits by others to make a great impact towards societal progress.

I have traveled around Kenya and many parts of the world. I have seen homeless people in the US and Japan who have to sleep in open halls in winter.  I have seen “lost generations” who had no education opportunity in the middle of wars in south Sudan. I have seen people in Somalia whose lives are shuttered by famine and wars. But I have also seen communities excluded from benefits of public resource allocation, and profiled and targeted with state forces as if they don’t belong.  I have seen corruption with impunity by those in charge of public resources while around them women die in childbirth for lack of healthcare services. I have seen leaders chasing power and flying in helicopters while they ignore the immediate simple challenges in the lives of their people crying for their intervention. I have seen the so called political leaders in power having no people-centered agenda but just insatiable craving for control of resources to accumulate wealth for the sake of it.

If these experiences cannot move us to join hands and work together with like-minded men and women and organizations and build capacities of people to find solutions to these problems and to demand and fight for the fulfilment of their rights, then what will?

It therefore gives me great hope that you and others visiting us in this space and interacting with us will join us so that we forge a concerted effort to tackle these challenges.

If you cannot support by physically joining us in our daily work with communities  – in our Community Aiders Programme – you can contribute in cash or even in kind to support our work and those whom we work with.

Blessings as we work together!