Join us for the next few weeks on a series of impact stories from NEAR’s Flagship Solution: The Change Fund, highlighting five of the Fund’s Principles: Swift, Trust-based, Locally led, Context Sensitive + Flexible, Accountable + Always Learning.

Change Fund Principles in Action: Trust-Based, the story of PACIDA in Kenya 

Our second story is about our member, Pastoralist Community Initiative and Development Assistance (PACIDA) in Kenya, exemplifying trust-based as the Change Fund’s principles in practice.

Marsabit County, Kenya covers more than 70,000 square kilometers of arid and semi-arid land. Most of the county’s half a million residents depend on that land. 

When five cycles of drought between 2022 and 2023 consumed the county, more than 70% of the livestock, precious to the pastoralist communities, were wiped out.  

“For most community members, it turned almost into destitution,” says Ibrahim Abdallah, Partnerships Manager for Pastoralist Community Initiative and Development Assistance, or PACIDA. 

Then, in 2024, heavy rains hit the area from March to May, and the drought suddenly turned into serious flooding.   

PACIDA, a local organisation operating in Kenya since 2008, understood how detrimental this was for the community, affecting their access to food, livelihoods, and mental health. PACIDA’s response was immediate. 

“We engaged with the community, and we were able to establish a platform of trust where they shared their devastation as far as the flooding was concerned,” Ibrahim says.  

PACIDA followed its tested model of creating village accountability committees to determine who was most in need of unconditional cash assistance. 

The village accountability committees create a chain of transparency and community ownership in the response.  

“These are representatives from all corners of the village,” Ibrahim explains. “It includes persons with disabilities, youth, women, men, the elderly. These are people who are trusted and elected by the communities.” 

Without the Change Fund grant that supported this emergency response, Ibrahim says the situation would have been dire. PACIDA was the only organisation that was able to intervene in the hardest hit areas of Marsabit County and work with more than 2,200 community members to recover after the floods. 

The Change Fund supports local leaders like Ibrahim, strengthens local organisations like PACIDA, and ensures resources for crisis-affected communities.