Learning Coming Alive
Our Stories
The Ustawi Global mission is to empower individuals and communities worldwide by connecting young people, educators, and strategic partners through integrated learning experiences focused on regenerative well-being, authentic relationships, and entrepreneurship skills, laying the foundation for collective flourishing.
These stories celebrate the successes of transformed lives and communities through our values of agency, creativity, and impact.
Agency
We cultivate household transformation by nurturing awareness, advocacy, and action to increase resilience and adaptability in changing times.
When the Ustawi Survey team first met Cecilia during the initial Poverty Stoplight survey, her life was marked by extreme vulnerability. As a young, shy girl and new mother, she faced numerous challenges, including having no income or formal education, and many responsibilities as a stay-at-home mum. After Cecilia completed her life map, the team followed-up with Cecilia monthly, offering encouragement and support while keeping her focused on her goals. In the two years that...
We met Christine as a bright young woman who had been married shortly after she finished high school. She welcomed us into her home to complete the Ustawi Survey and develop a Life Map to assist her in reducing poverty. At first, she identified practical steps to increasing the stability of her household, including gaining access to credit and purchasing insurance. However, further conversation revealed more about her character, described by Ustawi Mentor Samson Nyikuri...
Duncan was working as a boda boda driver during the first round of Ustawi Surveys, and quickly became a huge help to our work. He is well known in his community and assisted us in mapping out the locations of different households, even helping us with translations from Maasai to Swahili during these initial conversations. Through his first survey, it became clear that Duncan’s priority was in growing his savings so he could start to...
Creativity
We encourage innovation, based on community agency and the development of entrepreneurial skills, to co-create solutions to local challenges.
In September 2024, Ustawi Global approved a grant application from the Nyumbani Collective supporting their mission of addressing food insecurity and sustainability in agriculture through poultry farming. James Kamau, Melanie Namukuru, and Samson Nyikuri make up the core team, pursuing their vision of a community-centric organisation that reduces the cost of poultry farming for local farmers through innovative and sustainable agricultural practices. They have been guided by Ustawi Global co-founder Thompson Morrison in this learning...
While the Ustawi Survey has led us all to see the assets held within and by the Maasai, it has also revealed where there are limitations to the capacity of the community to achieve goals named on their Life Maps. The main goal named by the people specifically living in Embolioi is easier access to clean water. We came to understand that when there is access to water, many of the other areas of poverty...
Learning is coming alive at Guadalupe Primary School in Mashuuru, Kenya with the support of Ustawi Global. Nick Salmon spent a week in Mashuuru, supporting our Ustawi Kenya team during their second survey period in October 2023. While the team returned to interview more than 100 households, Nick spent long days with young people and educators at Guadalupe Primary School. Kelvin Kiptum had just won the Chicago Marathon in a record time of 2:00:35, a...
Impact
We are committed to supporting meaningful, measurable, and lasting change by increasing agency, cultivating creativity and developing entrepreneurial skills to achieve collective flourishing.
In July 2024, seven educators and school leaders representing seven learning communities from Tanzania, Kenya, and the United States of America gathered on the campus of Secondary Education for Girls Advancement (SEGA) in Morogoro, Tanzania for a week of exploring the elements of a Ustawi Global model school. This inaugural event of the international education non-profit Ustawi Global elevated the learning journeys of each participating community while introducing strategies for deepening practices of connections, learning,...
January marked James Kamau’s first full month as our Kenya Liaison. He reflects on his learning journey, shares connections that have come alive through his involvement in the Mashuuru water project as President of the Rotaract Club of Nairobi Parklands revealing his shared values with Ustawi Global, and looks forward to the impact he may have implementing Ustawi Global’s model of integrated learning experiences and community empowerment in the Kenyan context.