"Because it’s ours"
In November 2024, Legado’s Executive Vice President, Liz Corbishley, traveled to Northern Kenya to discover how Thriving Futures enables powerful change—built by communities themselves
Liz visited the Nkishon Supat e Ngilai project in Ngilai, Northern Kenya, from her home in Nairobi. In Ngilai, Samburu pastoralists steward critical rangelands while working to improve their community well-being. Liz shared this reflection following her journey.
Photo: Roshni Lodhia/Legado
“Communities get Thriving Futures straight away,” Walter tells me, twisting round from his seat at the front of the car. “It’s NGOs and governments that have a hard time understanding.”
Walter Lenolngenje is our Thriving Futures Program Coordinator in Kenya and from Samburu. I sit in his words for a beat, sipping my warm Coke Zero.
“That’s why I’m here today,” I say. “I really want to understand.”
The car plunges down to the fourth river crossing. There are five such of these on the way into The Ngilai Community Conservancy (Ngilai Conservation Project), and the flash rains we have been experiencing for the past few weeks mean we could get cut off from returning to the hotel at multiple points. I hold on and look out at the wide, sandy riverbed, blue skies, and mountainous green hills.
From left to right: Walter Lenolngenje, Thriving Futures Program Coordinator; Noel Laringato, Thriving Futures Community Coordinator; Agatha Ogada, Regional Director of Programs and Partnerships, Africa; Liz Corbishley, Executive Vice President | Legado
I know that through the Thriving Futures model, Legado supports communities to develop Legacy Plans, and that these plans consist of priorities. But today, I am hoping I can understand not just what Legado does, but why.
The car comes to a stop at a community health center, and I follow the team to the huge tree overlooking a river below. We set up our office on its roots, and person after person comes to talk to us, eager to tell us about Thriving Futures here in Ngilai.
We ask an elderly mama, who is also a respected traditional health care attendant, what the difference is between Thriving Futures meetings and other NGO meetings she may have participated in. (Legado’s Thriving Futures Site Coordinator, Andrew, jokingly calls her his mother-in-law as he has brought so many pregnant women to see her). She lists off a couple of other NGO meetings she has attended, but she can’t recall any details. She is, after all, very old, she tells us with a smile. But when we ask about the Thriving Futures meetings, her face lights up. She tells us, “These meetings were about me. About my life, my culture, my needs, and my hopes.”
Left: The rangelands of Northern Kenya | Roshni Lodhia/Legado
And in that moment, it’s clear—this isn’t just another program. It’s a space where people see themselves, their voices, and their futures reflected.
In a break between meetings and community interviews, Andrew, along with Noel, Legado’s Thriving Futures Community Coordinator, unfurls flipcharts to add more colour. “When people arrive on the first morning, we say that they are at the middle of the circle,” Andrew explains, pointing at concentric circles on his flipchart. We ask, “what made you come today?” Everyone will have a story; but we talk about the fact that they all came through an individual decision-making process. We explain that over the next couple of days we will move to the next circle out,” Andrew points to match his words, “where we are making decisions as a collective community. This is where we create community Legacy Plans and the community sets their own priorities. Ultimately,” he points at the outer circle, “this impacts the landscape and the environment the community lives in.”
I grab a handful of macadamia nuts—it’s a “snack for lunch” kind of day. This is where it gets complicated and interesting. The team explains how Thriving Futures makes space for every aspect of the community, recognizing how different dimensions overlap, interact, and shape one another, and the role of the community’s own strengths and challenges. Most NGOs arrive with a fixed menu of what they offer (e.g. an education NGO that talks only about teacher training or building a classroom); with Thriving Futures, communities can dream and set priorities in any aspect of life that is collectively important.
My fundraiser hat tells me this could be a nightmare. Giving communities complete autonomy to identify their biggest challenges and craft solutions that work for them is hard to package to a donor community used to convenient silos—and even more so when we are trying to do this with an increasing number of diverse communities across the world. But communities don’t live in silos.
As I see more and more community members light up when they talk about their Legacy Plans and priorities, the more I realise that what seems like a nightmare for a fundraiser is a dream for the people in the community. Life is messy and overlapping, and any dignified support should be able to mirror this. Real support should reflect real life. I mentally throw my metaphorical fundraising hat into the river rushing below.
Walter grins as he sees understanding dawn. “The community is on board by the first tea break. The noisier it gets, the more we know it’s going well.”
I cannot wait to see the Walter-Noel-Andrew trio in action.
Over the next few hours I focus on learning as much as I can about how these theoretical priorities get put into action, and what this means for the communities and landscapes. My favourite question becomes, “Which priority is most important to you, and how has it changed your life?”
Left: A Samburu woman fills out a Florecita at a Legacy Planning workshop in Ngilai, Northern Kenya. The Florecita represents how the community views its own well-being across the intersecting areas that make up a Thriving Future | Legado
Some respondents focus on how they have created change themselves. For example, one mama says that she now weeds invasive species from her homestead that the livestock cannot eat. As a result the grass is growing again and livestock can graze. She also tells us that her home now looks beautiful, a huge source of pride for her. Everyone is doing this in her community now, she reports, and they are on their way to recovering some of the fragile ecosystem.
Roselyn, a participant in the Thriving Futures workshops, shared how the community’s maternity shelter came to be—a process that captures the community-directed nature of this work. Although plenty of women gave birth locally, women didn’t feel comfortable going to the existing health center. Through the Thriving Futures process, the community decided to build a traditional birth shelter following Samburu customs.
The community is growing a vegetable garden outside the maternity shelter, which feeds the new moms and offers them farm plots | Legado
The impact of this has been far reaching. An 18-year-old mother described birthing at the shelter as feeling like home, but with expert support. More women are now using the health center for pre- and ante-natal care, increasing demand for services and making the facility a higher priority for government funding.
Beyond healthcare, the shelter has brought the community together. This was the first time the community saw men being involved in building a manyatta, a traditional Samburu house, and the team learned everything from construction to the exact dung/cement ratio required for the shelter to remain sturdy. In addition, the shelter has attracted more funding to grow a vegetable garden behind the shelter that feeds the new mums and offers them farm plots.
“Because it’s ours,” she says, simply and powerfully.
On the drive back, I reflect on the shelter’s success with Walter. If Legado was a typical NGO, we would push to build a maternity shelter in a similar nearby community. And you know there would be a Legado sign on the building.
Walter understands the question I didn’t articulate. “Yes, but a maternity shelter wasn’t a priority for that community. They wanted training for their health care attendants.”
That’s really the point. After this trip, I see clearly not just what Legado does, but why it matters. Legado is about ensuring communities have the power to define and achieve their own Thriving Future, on their own terms and with their own strengths. As Walter affirmed, communities “get it” right away. The challenge is whether NGOs and governments are willing to step back, listen, and realize communities know best.
Building a maternity shelter that prioritizes traditional Samburu maternity care was a community-defined priority for Ngilai | Legado