Beatrice Fullal Foundation

My community needs me. 

The funds will go into;

1. Economic community empowerment through education, skill development, basic reading and writing skills in the local native dialects, mobile and smart internet use. Leveraging smart livestock solutions where families will be able to produce, sell and profit from items like beef jerky, goat cheese, camel cheese, table banking, savings, and barter trade.
2. Setting up community smart wifi hubs to access free educational materials and videos via the internet that will be developed by our organization in local dialects. The goal is to have digital learning hubs to bridge the gap created by communities and villages living in remote locations.
3. Community health solutions and training sessions that are targeted to solving and managing communicable diseases, maternal and child health care, menstrual hygiene, and access to basic healthcare material via a software platform that will be developed by us. 
4. Leveraging our local committees already in place to engage individuals to learn about the fundamental elements of democracy, their human rights, and the responsibilities associated with defending and respecting those rights. This will increase democratic participation by encouraging individuals to register to vote, obtain national identity cards, register births, and participate in national elections.

Our organization was born and named from the work of Beatrice Fullal who is my grandmother. She worked in the field of early childhood education, community development, and peacekeeping within the Samburu community. 

Being a woman who made it "out" from a community that is known largely for harmful practices like Female Genital Cutting and early childhood marriages, I knew that my legacy had to be back in my community, ensuring that many other individuals make it "out" through access to knowledge and education. 

Our vision is to ensure that each family is given an opportunity at accessing basic human needs like education, healthcare, and economic empowerment. 

We believe by formulating community-specific solutions in local dialects will encourage sustainability because not only will we preserve their cultures, replace harmful practices but also the communities will feel part and parcel of the solutions. 

Towards our future goal, we have been building a center that will be a hub for training and program management and we intend to build various centers within the 2 ASAL counties of Samburu and Marsabit that we are located in to ensure that all our 4 pillars are sustainable.

Decent work and economic growth for all. ASAL Counties in Kenya are home to about 36% of the population, 70% of the national livestock, and 90% of wildlife, however, unemployment remains high and economic opportunities in marginalized areas are still limited, especially for women. Women form about 50.1% of the Kenyan population and when a family is struggling economically, girls are more likely than boys to be taken out of school to help with income-generating activities and are married off at a young age to improve economic growth in the family through livestock exchange for dowry payment. 

Our organization is based in Samburu and our solution is by the community, for community, we listen and integrating the community to work with us, and translate our training sessions to the local dialects. For several years, we have been conducting various community-based training sessions in partnership with local CBO's across Samburu and Marsabit. We have formulated training that focuses on Health, Education, Economic Growth and Leadership. Thus, including skill and career development, economic growth including money-making opportunities & management for the women and women groups, menstrual health & hygiene, human rights education, and girlchild empowerment.

Digital Heritage advancement and preservation. 

Having come from the indigenous Samburu tribe, we seek not to replace our culture rather preserve it by bringing out opportunities that can be used for economic growth and foster participation and peace by bringing the different pastoralist tribes in the north ASAL region together to learn from each other. Our digital integration is the key disruptor in our model because we will offer free access to educational material translated in the local dialects that will bridge the remote locations gap, we will have WiFi hubs that will provide low to zero access to data that will provide access to the online training tools and videos to the users advancing their knowledge and training.

The digital hub will host a creative studio where the locals can preserve their heritage through culture-centric content like pictures of the indigenous communities, videos of folk music and folk stories and their beadworks. Global users can purchase material through this creative studio therefore further advancing the economic growth for the communities. 

Through education, we have been able to conduct sessions on basic literacy, math, project management, and budgeting skills that help participants successfully plan and launch small businesses in their communities. We currently are working in partnership with a local community with women groups. This has fostered economic growth through financial management, savings culture. 

We provided solar lanterns that are embedded with mobile phone charging ports and radio and were in partnership with local radio stations to administer educational material through their stations for the children who were not able to access any digital classes especially when the COVID 19 pandemic rendered all schools closed.

Health – Menstrual health & hygiene training, we a pool of schools and villages where we regularly visit and conduct menstrual health training and donating sanitary towels to girls and women bi-monthly and health talk empowerment sessions with the communities. 

Through this, we are currently in RND to develop safe, disposable, and biodegradable sanitary towels from locally available plant fibers and we are currently in the second phase after successfully producing the first few pieces. This will be a huge benefit to solving a huge crisis that was recently exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic.