The Kindu Trust is a small charity registered in the UK and Ethiopia that works directly with around 350 families in Ethiopia. We predominantly work in the North West area of Ethiopia including Gondar, Debark, Lalibela and Tikil Dingay and we also support some families in Addis Ababa. We have been working within these communities for over 15 years, having started by helping children living on the streets. We now work through our Child Sponsorship Programme and Community Programmes to support disadvantaged families in Ethiopia who face the daily struggle of providing sufficient water, food, clothes and shelter for their children.

Our Objectives

At The Kindu Trust, our mission is simple – to create an environment in which children can be healthy, go to school and work towards a brighter future. To help achieve this, The Kindu Trust is working diligently to:

• Fulfil the basic needs of children and their families through monthly financial support and material donations;
• Enable access to education and healthcare through the provision of school supplies, supplementary classes and vocational training, and medical support;
• Support the families to become financially independent through Community Income Generating projects and activities;
• Improve the general well being and quality of life for children and their families by providing safe spaces to play, organised activities and by providing home improvements and community sanitation facilities.

Our Approach

The Kindu Trust occupies a unique position in the communities we work with. Our team in Ethiopia are all local and live among the families that we support. Our Sponsorship Manager is our longest serving member of staff and has been supporting children since the charity was founded in 1998 when she worked as a House Mother in one of our homes for orphaned children living on the street.

We are a small charity but our size is also our power, we remain connected to the communities we work in so are able to respond to their needs. This also allows supporters to be exceptionally connected to the families and projects they support. We have a part time member of staff based in the UK who facilitates supporter or sponsor relationships with the charity and the sponsored children and works tirelessly to fundraise to continue The Kindu Trust’s work.

Because we are small, we are not tied down to projects dictated to us but set up programmes according to the communicated needs of the communities we work in. This has resulted in some terrific programmes like our Mother’s Coffee Morning, a group of mothers who are HIV positive who have formed a support network meeting every fortnight to sew toys for malnourished children at Gondar hospital, or our Biogas Community Sanitation Project that provides toilets and showers to communities and uses the waste from these to produce gas for use for cooking in a community kitchen which now supports numerous small business enterprises.

“Our group visited the Kindu Trust several times in April . We were astounded by the place and the work that is done there. We soon came to realise that every penny that is donated goes to where it is needed most. [..] Marta [Sponsorship Manager] and the team took us to meet the children that our school sponsors and everywhere we went children ran up to her smiling and had a little chat. We witnessed firsthand through their smiles how important the work of the Kindu trust was to the people of Gondar.” – School Sponsor who visited The Kindu Trust in Ethiopia, 2014

The Kindu Trust keeps its operating costs low while refusing to compromise on the quality of care that we offer to our sponsored families and our supporters. We keep our UK costs to a minimum with only one part-time staff member, we share our offices in Gondar and London with our partner charity Link Ethiopia, and we draw on the skills and expertise of our enthusiastic group of volunteers to keep our operations running smoothly.

Please see our Child Sponsorship Programme and Our Projects to learn more about what we do.

We are a UK registered charity: Registered Charity number 1069574