Educate & Give voice to HODI Girls in North Kenya

We are grateful for your continued support with our work. Our Annual Report for 2024 and 2025 is now published, and you can read it on our website at hodiafrica.org. It covers both years together, because that is how the work was delivered.

What your support reached

Across the two years we reached 18,687 people directly and 33,875 indirectly, 52,562 in total, across six projects in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Football

1,026 young people took part in football sessions and league matches, 318 of them girls. We trained 40 coaches, 21 of them women, in first aid, life skills delivery, safeguarding, and hygiene and menstruation. The coaches are young people from the same communities as the players, and most stay on as volunteers once the season ends.

64 teams registered across two league seasons, run with the Football Kenya Federation. We repaired the Hulahula pitch and distributed 50 footballs to coaches and community members.

Two findings from the evaluation matter more to us than the numbers. Agreement with gender equality principles among players and coaches rose from 10 per cent at baseline to 50 per cent at endline. And the evaluation recorded a 90 per cent improvement in positive interaction between young people from different ethnic and social backgrounds.

Education

Life skills sessions are delivered in designated safe spaces, where female genital mutilation, menstrual health, gender-based violence and conflict can be discussed without an audience. This year we also supported three girls with scholarships through funds raised on GlobalGiving.

Peacebuilding

Peace committees were trained in eleven locations, and a new cross-border peace committee was established for the Sololo to Miyo corridor. 50 community facilitators were trained; they ran monthly dialogues, drafted three petitions and delivered them to duty bearers, and took community priorities on water, health and roads into the county budget process.

An independent evaluation of our cross-border peacebuilding work in February 2025 recorded an 85 per cent reduction in conflict.

Women's savings

Qusanno reached 109 people, 94 per cent of them women, across three village savings groups. Those groups accumulated more than KES 200,000 a month between them, and used it for school fees, settling hospital bills and starting or strengthening small businesses. All three filed their annual tax returns on time and submitted quarterly progress reports to the government regulator.

Climate and livelihoods

1,675 tree and fruit seedlings distributed and planted with the Kenya Forest Service. 79 households received goats or chickens, each receiving at least two, rebuilding an asset base that drought had taken.

The report includes our audited financials for both years, and the second year was hard. Income fell by 61 per cent as two large grants completed, and we ended 2025 with a deficit of KES 10.2 million.

What it did not do was stop the work, because our communities do most of it. Peace committees, community facilitators, women leaders and volunteer coaches carried projects through a year when we could pay for less. Nearly 60 per cent of everything we spent went to direct project costs. Both years were independently audited and both received an unqualified opinion. HODI has been audited every year since 2010 and has received a clean audit in each of those years.

What this year looks like

We have launched RECAP, Resilient Borders: Advancing Climate Adaptation, Peace, Livelihood and Preparedness in Cross-Border Communities of Kenya and Ethiopia, which over three years aims to reach 12,773 people directly across the two countries. Shoot to Score continues in four public schools with support from the FIFA Foundation and GlobalGiving partners.

Thank you. None of the work in this report was done by HODI alone. Your giving sits alongside the work of our communities, our women leaders and our coaches who deliver it. The full report is on our website at hodiafrica.org. We would be glad if you read it. On behalf of the communities we serve, thank you for standing with us.

Links:

• Read our full annual report here