Theory of Change
Goal: To transform a single community library into a sustainable, partner-backed organisation delivering education, mentorship, and extracurricular programming for children in one of Nairobi's most underserved communities.
Intervention Pathway: If we combine consistent library access with youth-led clubs, life-skills mentorship, and dignity-focused interventions (monthly sanitary-towel distribution), and then formalise the initiative into a registered CBO with institutional partnerships for digital learning, mentorship, and extracurricular pathways, then the organisation can outlive any single funding cycle and scale its reach well beyond what one library could sustain alone.
Mathare, one of Nairobi's largest informal settlements, offered limited safe spaces for structured learning. Young women in particular faced additional barriers to consistent school and library participation tied to menstrual health access and safety. A single community library run on goodwill had no path to sustaining or scaling that impact without formal structure and partnerships.
Supervise the Mashimoni SOH library and lead empowerment clubs from 2015, then — starting in 2019 — co-found and direct its formal expansion into a registered community-based organisation, now operating as YouthRise ChangeMakers.
- Youth-Led Clubs: Led reading, debate, boys', and girls' clubs, building literacy, confidence, and teamwork among youth.
- Mentorship: Facilitated life skills sessions and career mentorship programmes for holistic youth development.
- Gender-Inclusive Access: Coordinated monthly sanitary-towel distribution, creating a gender-inclusive, dignified learning space.
- Organisational Formalisation: Co-founded and directed the organisation's evolution from a single library into a registered CBO, securing three institutional partnerships — ChallengeAid, Education in a Suitcase (the SmileyTutor/tutor-web platform), and Board Lords Chess Club.
- Programme Expansion: Grew delivery from a handful of clubs into 100+ recurring programmes and clubs, sustaining service to 500+ children over 8+ years.
- Grew a single library initiative into a formally registered, partner-backed CBO reaching 500+ children over 8+ years.
- Established three institutional partnerships providing digital learning tools, mentorship, and extracurricular pathways — including chess.
- Board Lords Chess Club, the organisation's own chess programme, now contributes teams to ChallengeAid's broader multi-team Chess Club initiative, which advanced to national-level competition in both 2025 and 2026.
- Sustained a gender-inclusive learning environment — sanitary-towel distribution and a dedicated Girls Club — as a permanent, continuing pillar of the organisation, not a one-off intervention.
Learnings & Sustainability
Community trust built over years, not months, is what allowed a single library to formalise into an institution capable of attracting its own partners rather than depending on one funder. That same foundation is what later gave multi-site programmes — Training-of-Trainers models, EdTech rollouts — community buy-in from day one.