Grow Hope Kakuma

Aim

To grow food, skills, and dignity for refugee families in Kakuma through permaculture training and community gardens.

Growing Food, Skills & Dignity in Kakuma

Life Skills for a Better Future (LSBF) is a community-led organisation working in Kakuma Refugee Camp, supporting families through food growing, education, and practical skills training. In a place where humanitarian aid cuts have left many families struggling to access even one meal a day, growing food has become an urgent necessity - not just for survival, but for dignity, resilience, and hope.

LSBF already have the foundations in place: water access, fencing, and a permaculture learning space have been secured. Now, I am supporting them to raise funds for the next vital step- a 12-month food growing and education programme that helps families produce their own food while learning long-term sustainable skills.

This project will support seasonal vegetable and legume production, demonstration gardens, community planting and harvesting, and practical permaculture training for women, young people, and families. The gardens are not only places to grow food - they are living classrooms where people learn soil care, composting, seed saving, water-wise growing, and how to create resilient home food systems.

Alongside this, children and young people will take part in creative wellbeing workshops, nature-based learning, and safe spaces for play, confidence, and connection. By involving younger generations, LSBF are not only responding to immediate hunger; they are cultivating future land stewards who can carry these skills forward for years to come.

The programme directly supports 40–60 regular adult participants, with wider benefits reaching female-led households, neighbouring families, and local communities through shared harvests, surplus produce sold in local markets, and the spreading of practical knowledge. Up to 45 children and young people will also engage in learning and wellbeing activities throughout the year.

LSBF's long-term vision is not dependency, but self-reliance. Families who complete the programme can move into managing their own home plots, making space for new participants each year. Through seed saving, local seed swaps, and community-led training, this project creates lasting resilience that grows beyond the original funding.

Your support will help fund seeds and seedlings, tools, training materials, local trainer stipends, children’s workshops, programme coordination, and the day-to-day running needed to keep this work alive. Every contribution helps turn land into food, learning into independence, and crisis into possibility.

As Polydord Wasokye from LSBF says:

“Food growing is not only about food. It is about dignity, learning, and giving our community skills for the future.”

The fundraiser - Laura Corfield 

Laura is co-founder of Shift Bristol - a community focused on practical sustainability, permaculture, and regenerative ways of living.

Shift Bristol first connected with LSBF in early 2024, and since then Laura has been part of an ongoing collaboration, supporting the team through monthly online sessions and wider network sharing. Through this connection, she has witnessed the depth of care, creativity, and resilience within the LSBF team - particularly in their work with children and young people in the camp - offering space for expression, play, and emotional support in an environment where opportunities for safety and joy are limited.

Laura is clear about her role in this work: “This isn’t about ‘saving’ anyone. LSBF is a refugee-led initiative, rooted in the leadership, skills, and vision of the community itself. My role is to stand alongside - to support, amplify, and help resource what is already growing.”

She is running this crowdfunder in response to the increasing urgency of the situation. As global humanitarian funding declines, access to basic necessities such as food - and potentially even water- is becoming more precarious.

Having seen the tangible impact of previous fundraising efforts — from providing creative materials for workshops, to supporting the development of a charcoal briquette social enterprise, to purchasing shoes for children who had been walking barefoot — Laura is motivated to continue supporting this work.

“This support makes a real difference. Even small contributions ripple out in deeply meaningful ways.”

All funds will be transferred directly to support LSBF’s food growing and education programme in Kakuma Refugee Camp.

https://lsbfkenya.org/

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 14th August 2026 at 1:01pm