By Iain Guest and Stella Makena | Project coordinators in Kenya and the US
This email is going to 36 friends who have helped our partner Shield of Faith transform waste and grow vegetables in the impossibly crowded informal settlements of Nairobi. You have given a combined $4,625 since we launched this appeal in 2024. Thank you!
You may remember from our past reports how Shield of Faith was set up at the UN Summit on Women and Girls in 2019 to help members compost at home. The initiative was led by Stella, seen in the photos below.
In this report we look at how Stella and her team have taken their composting into the community – opening the way to social change. They have even begun to promote their model outside Kenya, which is truly exciting!
From individual households to the community
By the end of 2024, Stella’s team had mastered the art of composting at home and several members of the team were also growing vegetables in kitchen gardens. It was time to move into neighborhoods.
Ruth, one of the team’s founding members and most passionate composters, led the way. Helped by Stella Ruth created a composting “hub” on a piece of wasteland where local street vendors could drop off their vegetable cuttings to be composted free of charge.
The next to benefit were schools, which produce enormous amounts of waste in their kitchens. Stella received an invitation from Jacqueline, a much respected teacher at the Our Lady of Mercy, a large private girls’ school. Jacqueline directs the school’s green club and is active in the 4-K Clubs, a government program to encourage farming by students.
Jacqueline's school was growing vegetables in two large greenhouses but not yet composting. Stella and Jacqueline got to work and installed several bins near the greenhouses. The two have become fast friends.
The second school to benefit, Eretiti Secondary, is situated on parched land ourtside Nairobi. Stella’s team cleaned up a piece of land on the school grounds and installed cone gardens (photos below). The students at Eretiti are from the Maasai tribe and mainly eat meat, so Stella was delighted to introduce them to their first vitamin-rich vegetables, grown in their new school garden.
Shield of Faith was starting to change eating habits!
New donors, new partners
Shield of Faith helped four schools to compost almost seven tons of organic waste in 2025 and in the process improved the lives of 2,400 students and their families.
Stella also managed a savings group for ten women that provided members with low interest loans in return for a monthly contribution of 200 shillings. But producing change on a larger scale would require working with others with influence and resources. As a result, Stella's networking began in earnest in 2025.
Her success as an agent of change earned Shield of Faith a generous grant from the Foundation for Systemic Change. Late in 2025, the group also received $4,100 in donations from World Bank staff members through the Bank’s Community Connections Campaign, a giving platform for Bank officials.
This connection to the Bank led, in turn, to an invitation from the Belgian Embassy in Nairobi, which is the first embassy in the world to achieve zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. This was an unusual honor and Stella went with her teacher friend Jacqueline and Natasha, one of Jacqueline’s star pupils (top photo).
The benefits from networking were now clear and Shield of Faith developed several other important relationships in 2025: with the 4-K clubs; with CFK Africa (formerly Carolina for Kibera); and with Beyond The Trails Kenya (BTTK), which specializes in planting trees.
An appeal from refugees
Stella could be well pleased by what she had achieved in Kenya. It was time to go international, with help from our own network.
This began in 2021, when we assigned a smart undergraduate student in California, Delaney, to help Stella design her composting start-up. The following year we profiled Stella in this documentary. We have sent two accomplished graduate Peace Fellows from George Washington University to volunteer with Shield of Faith in Nairobi and invited Stella to join our own board of directors.
This year Stella has begun using our partnership to reach new communities outside Kenya. The first is a group of young Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh who have formed the Rohingya Education and Advocacy League (REAL) to demand better services in the camps. Food is a big concerns because refugees are not allowed outside the camps to farm. Adding to the problem, international food aid has been cut back.
Last December, REAL asked The Advocacy Project AP for a start-up grant to grow vegetables. The Rohingya camps are crowded and unhealthy, like the informal settlements of Nairobi, so we referred REAL to Shield of Faith. Stella sent REAL a list of the recycled materials she has used to build gardens in Kibera and this helped REAL to launch a gardening project for 40 refugee families.
The result has been spectacular - 1.4 tons of nutritious vegetables. Stella is now advising REAL on phase 2 of the project, which will support 40 new families and focus on calorie-rich varierties, like lentils.
The next request has come from AgriHope for Resilience, an association of refugees in the huge Kakuma camp in Kenya which is also reeling from deep cuts in food aid. Mtokani, the coordinator of AgriHope, made the long journey from Kakuma to Nairobi and explained his plans to Stella. The two then visited a demonstration farm outside Nairobi where Stella grows vegetables and trains her team at Shield of Faith.
After returning to Kakuma Mtokani sent us a proposal to build kitchen gardens for 50 refugee families, and at Stella's recommendation we will invest $1,000 in the start-up. As in Bangladesh, the rains have started in Kenya and planting is under way. We wish REAL and AgriHope the best!
Microcredit in Tanzania and composting in Pennsylvania
The next request to Shield of Faith came from Tanzania.
Earlier this year we received an inquiry from Women Actions for Development and Solidarity (WADS), a respected NGO in Tanzania that wants to create a revolving fund for women in the informal sector.
The Advocacy Project has zero expertise in microcredit, but Stella has run a successful savings and loan scheme for her group in Nairobi and offered to advise. With her help, WADS has decided to set up a small revolving fund for ten women and at Stella's recommendation we will invest $1,000. If the ten women are earning a sustained income at the end of this year, WADS will know their approach works and will seek funding from a larger donor. Stella has agreed to monitor progress.
Stella’s latest initiative is here in the US. AP supports composting at several high schools in Pennsylvania and it has long been our dream to connect American students with students like Natasha in Kenya. This is now happening! We recently hosted a Zoom for Natasha and Ella and Claire, two students from a partner school near Philadelphia. Stella took part, along with Jacqueline and Nora - the two teachers - and Natasha's mother.
Natasha, Ella and Claire are avid environmentalists and this first meeting showed they have much to learn from each other. They noted, for example, that the challenge of food waste is different in both countries – overconsumption in the US and getting rid of the waste in Kenya. Composting could offer a solution to both.
No doubt these North-South "composting ambassadors" will find more to chew on in future conversations!
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Looking ahead, Stella will remain focused on Kenya, where she hopes to work in ten schools this year, while we will continue to promote her model internationally. We feel that Stella can do much good in our stressed-out world. In addition, every new partner for Shield of Faith advances our own mission to empower marginalized communities.
This, to us, is the essence of North-South partnership. Your donations have helped to make it happen!
With gratitude,
Shield of Faith in Nairobi and The Advocacy Project.
Links:
By Stella Makena | Project leader in Nairobi
By Stella Makena | Project leader in Nairobi
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