Kiini Sustainable Initiative

About us

Kiini Sustainable Initiative (KISI) is a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) that was established in 2003 and registered in December 2007 under Section 10 of the NGO Coordinating Act. The organization has its head office in Central province - Nyeri district, Kenya. Although the NGO’s operations are currently limited to a few selected pockets in the province, the long-term plan is to extend to other parts of the country. It has expertise in the relevant thematic areas including agriculture, community empowerment, drug and substance abuse experts, and trainers in decentralised financial services.

KISI’s interventions are aimed at improving livelihoods through increased farm productivity, and finding solutions that will transform the agricultural sector in a multi-sectoral approach. KIINI is a key partner to most government programs that promote similar agenda and has embraced a multidisciplinary approach. It has embraced the Value Chain approach to ensure that all the links contributing to the complete food chain are involved. In addition to the food security objective, KIINI aims at enhancing farmers’ access to rural based financial services and other cross cutting issues such as; promoting good governance and accountability; youth and Gender Empowerment, HIV/AIDs awareness prevention support systems; and Environmental effects mitigation.

Although many NGOs have made commendable success towards improving livelihoods for the rural poor a lot still remains to be done. The rural communities remain vulnerable to hunger and disease with a majority living on less that 2 USD a day. This is mainly due to low agricultural productivity arising from poor weather conditions characterised by prolonged droughts, and eratic rainfall, leading to frequent crop failures. Adverse effects on the climate with little mitigation efforts has also contributed to this state of helplessness for the majority of beneficiaries. Women play a key role in agricultural production, as they contribute more than 70% of the farm labour force. Good agricultural technologies have also not targeted women to the much needed capacity, thus greatly undermining their full potential. Other factors contributing to low productivity include; poor knowledge on appropriate agricultural technologies, high cost of inputs thus limiting their use, few irrigation systems and the absence of enabling institutions and other facilitating factors.

KIINI implements many activities through which its objectives are met. These include community capacity building and empowerment which seeks to increase participation by men, women, youth, the less privileged and excluded groups in the society so as to enhance good governance, democracy and accountability. It is engaged in mobilization of both local and outside resources to enable communities to spur innovations from within. The promotion community’s access to decentralized financial services is done by encouraging income generating activities and resource mobilization through group savings. Other cross cutting issues include the provision of an enabling environment for community empowerment; promotion of HIV/AIDs awareness and prevention, and comprehensive treatment support systems and, support to enable increasing women’s leadership, organization and action for social and economic justice. Out of these some achievements have been realized.

At total of 1000 community members have been mobilized and trained on Peace Building and Democratic Governance in partnership with other stakeholders; On Rural Based Financial Management a total of twenty five (25) community groups were mobilized. Trained over 12 groups of People Living with HIV/AIDS and Commercial Sex workers on drug adherence, behavior change and economic empowerment; Trained Community Based Organizations (Mwangaza forum and Naromoru Fighters of HIV/AIDS –NFA) advocating for women rights and fight against spread and stigmatization HIV/Aids respectively for the purpose of mitigation of social economic activities and facilitated the construction of 3 pit latrines and rehabilitation of 2 classrooms in Kamburaini Secondary School – Kieni East district.It is envisaged that budget support for the mentioned activities within the project area – five districts of central province will require two million eight hundred thousand – 2.8 million to reach 1500 households in a period of 3 years. It is expected that the 1,500 targeted vulnerable minorities will improve their nutrition and income status. Their livelihood will also change, from depending on casual labor to self sufficiency in food requirements. Farmers will have access to market information so as to ensure that decisions are made from an informed background. This will improve farm gross margins thus incomes. In all the livelihoods of the targeted population will be improved.You also watch Kiini on the youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHglapfbyKo