ABOUT RAFIKI THABO
Rafiki Thabo is a UK registered charity, based in Oxfordshire but working in Kenya, Uganda and Lesotho.
Our vision is that young people, including those living with disabilities, will be empowered through education to enable them to reach their full potential and initiate positive change in their communities. We do this by enabling access to education, working through local volunteer committees made up of community leaders known personally to the trustees. Our programmes centre around the Taita Taveta region and Thika town in Kenya, Teyateyaneng area in Lesotho and Kabale district in Uganda.
Rafiki Thabo was set up in 2006 by Jon Uglow who, after having spent 8 months living in a rural community in Kenya, realised that while he and his gap year peers all headed home to their university education and safe futures, his Kenyan friends just did not share the same opportunities, no matter how bright or driven they were. For the majority, affording an education and all the social and economic opportunities that it would bring was a remote possibility; their parents were subsistence farmers, they would be subsistence farmers. It was Jon’s passion to help change the outcome and break the poverty cycle – even for just a few – that resulted in Rafiki Thabo being set up, working closely with people he and his fellow trustees had lived with and gotten to know extremely well in Kenya, Uganda and Lesotho. These trusted friends and contacts subsequently became the in-country committees and remain so today.
Our programmes
We work with our committees in Kenya, Lesotho and Uganda to identify the children and young people who most need our support. All our scholars are from households who are struggling to make ends meet and can no longer afford school or higher education needs, more than half have lost one or both parents, and several are living with a disability. Our committees also identify particular education projects that fill gaps in the communities in which we work. We also work through partner organisations in Kenya who implement projects specifically enabling children living with disabilities to access an education which is suited to their special needs.
Our work falls into four main programmes:
Rafiki Thabo Scholars Programme
Through our scholars programme, we provide bursaries to bright young people who have gained a place at school/university but whose families have run out of the means to pay their fees. In 2024 we are supporting nearly 450 children and young people, more than half of whom are girls. Simply by paying their fees, we empower these young people to reach their full potential and pursue their dreams through education. Their ability to subsequently secure paid employment or start their own businesses means they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty, give back to their communities and contribute to the wider economic development of their countries.
Eat Well to Learn
Through our school meals programme, ‘Eat Well to Learn’, we provide at least 70 of the very poorest students with lunch each day at our partner school in Uganda. For many, this is their only daily meal, without which they would brave their long walk to and from school on an empty stomach, with little energy left to learn in class, making them more likely to drop out of school. ‘Rafiki Thabo …. don’t just worry about the children’s education but also about what they eat, and they provide thousands of free school meals for children who otherwise would go hungry.’ Dame Prue Leith, DBE
Improving the learning environment
Education does not exist in a vacuum, and at Rafiki Thabo we also support the development of school infrastructure and other ‘holistic’ projects in order to improve the environment in which children are learning. Projects we have funded in this area include building teachers’ accommodation, training girls to make reusable sanitary kits, reequipping an IT lab, constructing pig sties and chicken coops to generate income for the schools, electrification of classrooms, and the renovation of dormitories.
Removing barriers for children with disabilities
As a result of our merger with ACACIA UK, in April 2021 we adopted partnerships with three organisations in Kenya with whom we work to reduce the barriers to education for children living with disabilities. Our partner organisations are the Autism Society of Kenya (ASK), AIC Kajiado, and Dadashi Special Children’s Centre. We work with them to identify suitable projects which we fund and they implement.
Learn more about our work, our programmes, our impact and how you can get involved on our website : https://rafiki-foundation.org.uk/