Which Charities Fight Hunger in Kenya, and What Actually Works?

Food relief is a delivery. It is the right response to drought, flood, and displacement, and organizations built for it — the World Food Programme, Kenya Red Cross, Action Against Hunger — move at a speed and scale no small nonprofit can match.

Food security is a capability. It asks whether the family can grow or buy enough next season without anyone arriving. That work is slower, less photogenic, and is what reduces the number of relief trucks needed in five years.

It is rarely a shortage of willingness. Rainfall has become less predictable, land available to a household keeps shrinking as it is divided between generations, seed and fertilizer prices move faster than income, and water for irrigation often has to be carried by hand. A family living below the poverty line can work extremely hard and still be unable to put fresh vegetables on the table.

A garden tower is a vertical growing system built from locally available materials. It stacks growing space upward, so a household with almost no usable land can still grow greens, and it concentrates water at the core, so far less is lost to the ground than in a conventional plot.

One tower feeds a family of five fresh vegetables year-round. Families are trained to build and maintain their own, and the training is designed to pass along — the family that learns this year teaches neighbors next year. Fuller detail is at what are garden towers and on the Sustainable Food program page.

$25 funds one garden tower. $30 funds a thermal cooker, which cuts the firewood and cooking time a household spends on every meal. Both are on our donate page, and 100% of the amount you give reaches us because our donation platform charges nonprofits no fees. If you would rather see what a single gift becomes first, read stories from the communities we work in.