Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF) - Nairobi - Kenya

Kenya Community Development Foundation (KCDF) is a public philanthropic foundation that supports sustainable community driven development. Formed in 1997, KCDF is the first and oldest indigenous foundation of its kind in East Africa.

Our Vision : “All communities giving and working together in prosperity”.

Our Mission : “Promoting sustainable development of communities for social justice, through institution building, partnerships, resource mobilisation and policy influencing”.

The KCDF model for community development is a unique one that is now globally recognized as best practice – most recently by the Dubai International Awards for Best Practices . It is based on KCDF’s Theory of Change:

“KCDF believes that systemic and enduring change is possible when communities are able to initiate and drive their development agenda, work with governments and other actors to access basic rights and services as well as harness and grow their own resources. KCDF therefore invests in enhancing organized community-led initiatives to create a firm basis for sustainable development and social justice”

The unique components of the model are:-

Capacity building – empower the community to be organised and to identify their development priorities. This ensures ownership of the solutions and the process.
Continuous Accountability – for the community to be accountable and transparent to itself first as owners of the programme and to other partners
Strategic Niche
“KCDF’s Strategic Niche is promoting a model that enhances growth and sustainability of communities by their strong engagement in owning and driving their development efforts, through capacity development, community philanthropy and local resource mobilization”. In line with the KCDF mission to grow philanthropy in Kenya, the Foundation supports 20 communities to build their own endowment funds. These communities have a cumulative endowment of about US$ 1.3 Million within the KCDF Endowment Fund.