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Our vision is to live within a world where strong, healthy communities can thrive, building sustainable livelihoods and brighter futures. Our programmes are based on the needs of the communities we work with and focus on improving health, water, education and household income. We work with communities in Kenya to deliver programmes that enrich lives and create better futures.

Brighter Communities Worldwide is a registered charity in Ireland (CHY16505), and a company limited by guarantee (398094) and registered with the Charity Regulatory Authority (CRA 20059583). We began working with communities in rural Kenya in 2002. We are bringing people together to build a thriving economy and provide a safe, sustainable future for everyone. Our aim is simple – to empower people to create their own opportunities for a brighter future.

Brighter Communities Worldwide considers the whole community, enabling individuals and communities to be authors of their own development, building brighter communities for all. Our model creates an enabling environment for communities to realise change and uses a partnership based approach to deliver relevant programs to meet the needs of communities and individuals.
Creating brighter communities means ensuring:

Access to good, affordable health care
Education to help people find a job and be able to articulate their needs
An income that can sustain a family
Healthier lives with a supply of clean water and better facilities

Our values underpin everything we do, every decision we make and also help communicate the way we work and how we do things.

Integrity - We are an organization built on integrity and good governance with a track record for success.
Passion - We work passionately in all that we do to realise our vision across communities.
Togetherness – We work together with all our stakeholders; all programmes are based on community needs as identified by themselves.

Volunteers are at the heart of our organisation, both from within the communities where we work and from overseas they are committed to supporting the implementation of our programmes.

We are governed by a board of directors in Ireland and in Kenya

We have a CEO, an office manager in Ireland, a programme and operations manager in Kenya and a local staff team of 2 in Ireland and over 20 in Kenya in oversee implementation of the programme areas of health, education, access to water and economic empowerment.

Brighter Communities Worldwide was founded in 2002. In the beginning it focused on a few key projects in Londiani, Kenya and was called Friends of Londiani. Since then Brighter Communities Worldwide has expanded and developed its programmes and now works across two counties in Kenya with 228,000 people and is currently expanding into other African Countries.

The charity was the happy result of an unhappy incident. In August 2000 an Irish tourist, Maria Kidney, was mugged on the streets of Nairobi. She sought refuge in the Kenyan Girl Guides’ Headquarters. There she heard about the Kenyan Girl Guides’ work with various communities. Inspired by this, she contacted the Council of Irish Girl Guiding Associations about developing a service project which took place in 2002 when 20 adult leaders travelled to Londiani. What began as a one off project grew as the needs of the community became more evident and many more volunteer projects followed involving volunteers from all walks of life – men and women – and from many countries around the world.

Brighter Communities Worldwide sees itself as a catalyst for change; it kick starts development and enables communities to prosper and grow through creating connections and empowering people. Our community development approach focuses on the key areas of health, education, water and economic empowerment.

We rely on the generosity of supporters and donors who fundraise and make donations to support the community development programmes we deliver.

Your money is spent on delivering these programmes in partnership with the communities who benefit from them by improving access to water, health, education and economic empowerment. These programmes enrich their lives and help create better futures for them and their families.

All of our programmes are cost shared in Kenya, with the communities we are working with providing 50% of the costs by way of labour, materials donated or finance. We believe in a cost-sharing approach as it is sustainable, reinforces our partnership principles and creates a sense of ownership among communities.

Our accounts comply with the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) standard in general and with the Dóchas/Irish Aid guidelines on financial reporting. We publish our Annual Accounts online every year and these are available on our website.

Brighter Communities Worldwide

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