CIVICOM AID
Civicom Aid is an INGO working with ultra-poor communities in East Africa’s remote villages, drylands, and slums. Our community-designed, community-led, and community-owned projects help family farmers improve farm productivity, young ones access education, and entrepreneurs create jobs.
Informal Enterprise Growth
SDG 1: No Poverty
Civicom Aid’s Informal Enterprise Growth Pathway Project provides coaching, productive capital, and social support to entrepreneurs whose street and small businesses are struggling, at risk of collapse, or already collapsed. These interventions enable businesses to recover, grow, and create new jobs in marginalized informal settlements. Created jobs provide youth and adults with steady income. This income helps households become self-reliant, return children to school, and improve living conditions.
Farmer-Managed Community Restoration
SDG 15: Life on Land
Civicom Aid’s Farmer-Managed Community Restoration Project trains marginalized family farmers in rural and dryland regions through farmer hubs to apply low-cost regenerative farming, Assisted Natural Regeneration, bunds adoption, and AI-enabled farming. These interventions improve soil fertility, vegetation cover, water retention, ecosystem, and pest and disease control, increasing sustainable crop production. This leads to food security and sustainable self-reliant communities.
Community Education Access
SDG 4: Quality Education
The Community Education Access project builds missing school infrastructure or renovates old ones, establishes water points where none exist, provides school supplies to children who write on floors, connects out-of-school youth to online Brigham Young University degree courses, and trains them in STEM. These interventions enable youth to gain employment skills and children to return to school. Skilled youth secure jobs, earn income, and boost community development, improving overall education access.
Work With Us
We invite development partners, volunteers, and interns to join us in farming, education, and business projects serving marginalized ultra poor remote villages, slum communities, and dryland regions of Eastern Africa. You may support onsite, remotely, or both.
VISION
Thriving, self-reliant communities where every person can learn, farm sustainably, and earn income.
MISSION
We partner with ultra-poor communities to reduce poverty through education, sustainable agriculture, and income-generating opportunities.
How Civicom Aid Started
Their response was poignant: “In our villages, there is no water, no resources, no food.” Women and children traveled long distances to fetch water, and people in drylands struggled for every meal. The critical realization emerged—water was the key. Determined to make a difference, Jonathan initiated a multifaceted approach.
Starting with building water access in villages, he extended efforts to farming projects for food security, fostering prosperity. The next steps involved enhancing education and health to empower these marginalized communities. Through these initiatives, rural areas, drylands, and slums could break free from a century-long cycle of devastation and abandonment. Jonathan’s journey illuminated a path towards transformation, driven by the fundamental belief that water could be the catalyst for positive change.
In 2018 during a pivotal journey to Makueni County, Kenya, Jonathan Munyany encountered a stark reality. While touring the vast and flourishing properties of a wealthy businessman seeking help exporting meat to the Middle East, Jonathan observed a profound contrast. Amidst the prosperity of ranches, he couldn’t ignore the persistent poverty and destitution in the villages.
The absence of young adults, the vital force for community development, struck Jonathan deeply. Inquiring about their whereabouts, he discovered that many had left for towns and cities in search of jobs and reliable access to food and water. However, these urban areas offered little in terms of quality living conditions, with workers from villages residing in makeshift slums
Jonathan’s exploration revealed young men in the villages grappling with substance abuse and limited hope for the future. Disturbingly, some planned to marry young girls due to the scarcity of women their age. Motivated by these dire conditions, Jonathan delved into the issue further, visiting Nairobi to understand why young people felt compelled to leave their homes.