A school is more than a building.
Our approach.
We believe that education is much more than a classroom — and in many cases the building should come last. You get the building right only once you've got everything else right first: the teachers, the health, the food, the resources, the support for girls, the connection between a child's success and their family's stability.
Every intervention Memusi develops is tested, measured, and shared freely — because we know that if we can inspire others to follow what works, we'll reach far more children than we ever could alone.
Community ownership first.
Every school we support is started by the community it serves. We back their passion — we don't impose our own.
We measure what matters
Three simple metrics guide everything we do: grades, absence rates, and girls' enrolment. If we're not moving those numbers, we change what we're doing.
We share everything.
Every programme we develop gets given away freely. If our model works here, it should work everywhere — and it's not ours to keep.
We stay.
We don't build and leave. We commit to communities for the long term — which is the only way to know if anything actually works.
The best schools we can possibly build.
Education.
Memusi A and Memusi B are beacon schools — markers of quality for the wider Magadi community. Together they serve nearly 1,000 students from ages 3 to 15, and in 2025 saw their first ever Junior Secondary cohort sit national exams.
Alongside our own schools, we support 42 primary schools and Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres across the Magadi ward — through teacher training, resource sharing, and the Teacher Resource Centre that gives neighbouring schools access to materials they'd otherwise never have.
We don't just measure enrolment. We track attendance, grades, and girls' participation — because those 3 numbers demonstrate the difference we’re making.
30%
of Memusi A's first Junior Secondary School cohort scored Very Strong or Exceptional in their Grade 9 exams — top subjects: Science and Agriculture.
Reaching every child in Magadi.
Outreach.
Through Memusi Outreach we extend our impact beyond our own schools — reaching over 8,000 children across 42 schools with healthcare, nutrition, resources, and teacher development. Because the quality of education in a community isn't determined by one school alone.
Our healthcare programme includes free medical and dental camps, a de-worming and vitamin programme that reaches over 12,000 people per round, and our AfriPads partnership — providing reusable sanitary products to every adolescent girl in Magadi. When we piloted AfriPads, girls' absence due to menstruation dropped from 44% to 0%.
For many children at our schools, the breakfast and lunch we provide are the only meals they'll have that day. Keeping the kitchen running isn't optional — it's foundational.
0%
Girls' absence due to menstruation after our AfriPads pilot — down from 44%. Sanitary products aren't a luxury. They're the difference between a girl being in school or not.
When families thrive, children stay in school.
Enterprise.
A child's education doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in a family, in a community, in an economic context. When that context is unstable children leave school. We work to change that.
Through women's cooperatives, business grants, and enterprise training, we help families build economic foundations that keep their children in education. A £30 grant to a single mother can be the difference between her child staying in school and being pulled out to work.
We also offer adult literacy to parents who left school early or never attended — because an educated parent is the most powerful advocate a child can have.
150+
businesses established through our enterprise support programmes — putting money into families and keeping children in school.
Built to last. Owned by the community.
Sustainability.
We don't build schools and leave. Every school Memusi supports is designed to be owned, run, and loved by the community it serves — not dependent on the next fundraising campaign to keep the lights on.
In 2025, our sustainability work took real shape — from shade houses that feed children and teach agriculture, to the Innovation Classrooms that give students the tools for competency-based learning, to partnerships that help us build stronger, more resilient communities year on year.
Every child deserves to be seen.
Street children.
Our work with street-connected children in Nairobi is different from our education programmes in Magadi — different geography, different context, different needs. But it's guided by the same belief: that no child should be invisible.
Since 2019, we've been showing up every week with food, with presence, and with patience. We don't rush children, force outcomes, or promise quick fixes. We show up, we offer food without conditions, and we listen. Over time, those small repeated acts of care create stability in lives defined by uncertainty.
In 2025 we marked our 300th free kitchen — over 35,000 meals served since the programme began. We've opened five houses for street-connected mothers and their children. We've run medical camps that supported 400 people in a single day. And we've helped 150 young people start businesses and begin building lives away from the streets.
"Four months later, we entered a school and met Fatuma again. She came bounding through the door, throwing her arms open. Free from life on the street and thriving in school."
Fatuma's story - Nairobi
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