What we do

Three programs, one promise: no child in our care goes hungry, untaught, or unloved.

Families in Kariobangi don’t lack ambition for their children. They lack options.

Most parents we serve work long days in informal jobs — selling vegetables at the market, washing clothes, doing casual labour. When you earn a few hundred shillings a day and have three children at home, school fees, school meals and visits to the doctor are luxuries you can’t always afford.

Hands of Love steps into that gap. Our three programs work together because that’s how real life works — a hungry child can’t learn, a sick child can’t come to class, and a child without support at home loses the gains they make at school.

The Classroom

A real school day, with real teachers, for children who would otherwise be missing both.

We follow Kenya’s national Competence Based Curriculum (CBC), taught by accredited teachers who chose to be here. We focus on the basics — reading, writing, numeracy — alongside the things young children actually need: play, conversation, songs, art, and time outdoors.

We have begun integrating Waldorf-inspired methods into the early years, particularly for our youngest classes, because we’ve seen what happens when learning meets a child where they are.

Our four levels

• Pre-primary 1 (age 4)
• Pre-primary 2 (age 5)
• Grade 1 (age 6)

“The first time a child looks at a page of words and reads it back to you — that’s the moment we work for.”  — Hands of Love teacher

Two Meals, Six Days a Week

Because a hungry child can’t learn anything.

Every school day, our cook serves more than two hundred plates — breakfast and lunch, six days a week.

It costs about 18 cents per meal. We keep costs that low because we grow some of the vegetables on our rooftop garden and raise our own chickens. The garden doubles as one of our favourite classrooms: the children plant, water and harvest, and learn where food really comes from.

Alongside meals, we run regular health checks — dental, eye and general clinics — and accompany sick children to the hospital when they need it. For most of our children, Hands of Love is the only reliable healthcare they get.

When cholera or other water-borne illnesses sweep through Kariobangi — which still happens too often — we lean hard into prevention: hand-washing, clean water, and clear conversations with parents about what to watch for.

Standing With Families

A school can only do so much. Families do the rest.

Most of our work is in the classroom, but some of the most important work happens at the school gate, in living rooms, and at hospital bedsides.

Our teachers and staff stay in regular contact with parents. We share what their child is learning, what to practice at home, and which behaviours to gently encourage. We invite parents in for school activities. We hold parenting workshops alongside the Lea Toto Programme.

And when families hit the hard moments, we show up:

• Food and household supplies when a family is in crisis.
• Help relocating after floods or fires — something we’ve done several times in the past few years.
• Quiet support for women trying to leave abusive relationships.
• Job-search connections with our partners and local networks.

This isn’t charity in the old sense of the word. It’s the kind of thing a good neighbour does.

Our impact

A snapshot from 2025:

Read the 2025 Director’s Report →