Enkereri, Maasai Mara & Transmara
GIFT’s oldest partnership. It began with a school built in consultation with the elders, and today includes the Mother & Baby project, clean cooking for 90 households and a new water supply.
Our work
Maasai communities
Since 2001 GIFT has worked alongside Maasai communities in three areas of Kenya. Every project grows out of conversations with elders, women and families.
The communities
Il Polei & Nashula, Laikipia North
Fifteen years of partnership. Projects include a community botanical garden, a dam and solar-pumped water supply, a poultry project, and Maasai women learning beekeeping from the coast team.
Ngong & Kajiado
Food and water for elders and young children in years of drought, nutritious meals for girls at a safe house, and, in earlier years, women’s cattle projects.
Projects with Maasai communities
Gede (coast) & Laikipia
Beekeeping & the Honey Centre
GIFT's longest-running enterprise. It began with hives and training, and now includes a community-owned Honey Centre, a mangrove apiary and beekeepers training other beekeepers.
Maasai Mara (Transmara)
Mother & Baby project
Safer births for Maasai mothers, through clinic transport, vaccinations, mosquito nets and food. Since 2025 the project has been run and funded by the community itself.
Embu, Laikipia, Mara & Gede
Trees & woodlots
Tree nurseries, community woodlots and school planting days. The trees restore land and, after about five years, give a sustainable crop.
Laikipia North (Il Polei)
Laikipia botanical garden
A community garden protecting endangered indigenous and medicinal plants, now behind an elephant fence and watered from a new dam.
Mara, Nairobi, Laikipia & coast
Schools we've supported
Classrooms, desks, textbooks, teachers' salaries and first-aid kits, from GIFT's first Maasai school to a school for deaf children on the coast.
Maasai Mara (Enkereri)
Clean cooking
Gas cookers for 90 Maasai households cut smoke in homes, protect the forest and give children time for breakfast before school.
Coast, Mara & Laikipia
Bursaries & skills
School and college fees, degrees, driving licences and practical training that lead to real jobs.
Maasai Mara & coast
Farming & trench gardens
Composting, trench gardens and better use of small plots, so families can grow more varied food on their own land.
Maasai Mara & Ngong
Women's groups & cattle
Cattle owned by women's self-help groups. Selling cattle rebuilds the herd, and the remaining profit pays for education and health.
Laikipia & Maasai Mara
Clean water
A small dam, a solar pump and a 40,000-litre tank for about 100 people in Laikipia, and piped water in progress in the Mara.
Ngong (Kajiado) & Mombasa
Food & emergency support
Food for elders and young children, a year of nutritious meals for girls at a safe house, and small grants when illness strikes.
Gede (coast) & Laikipia
Small enterprises
A maize mill, a solar-chilled village shop and a poultry project, each paying its own way and creating jobs.
Small grants, real change
Every gift goes to projects that communities have chosen and run themselves.