The Common Ground Program (CGP) is a Kenyan grass-roots non-governmental community-based organization, founded in 1995. CGP has helped thousands of families in the rural communities of western Kenya improve their lives through education.

Economic Development Projects
CGP’s economic development projects provide training and resources to individuals and families without access to other economic opportunities. These projects create access to micro finance savings and credit for borrowers, and also include intensive training in financial and small business management skills as well as vocational skills. These economic development projects focus on providing women with skills and resources that allow them to become self-sufficient and to provide for their children and families.

Education Projects (Primary School, Care and Support of Orphans, and Vulnerable Children)
Education is a fundamental human right and the basis for creating social change. CGP’s education projects - Pathfinder Academy and provisions of care and support for orphan and vulnerable children - promote education in underserved communities, engage women, girls and boys provide access to learning, and harness education as an empowerment tool for entire communities.

Health Projects
CGP’s projects advance health by focusing on health education and promoting access to healthcare. These projects train and support local health workers who provide services, counseling and education in their communities on family planning, sexual and reproductive health, hygiene, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, child development, primary healthcare and other critical health issues. These projects integrate medical and social approaches to health problems and their solutions.

HIV/AIDS Projects
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is creating global social, economic and human rights disasters that have had a particularly devastating impact throughout the developing world. CGP supports local groups and associations of people living with HIV that are devising effective and innovative strategies to limit the spread and mitigate the effects of HIV/AIDS in their communities.

Food Security (GROW BIOINTENSIVE Farming)
Increased food security, crop diversification and the protection of natural resources are the guiding principles of CGP's. These sustainable agriculture projects provide families and entire communities with vital technical and material resources for improving nutrition and increasing income generation. These projects also enable rural farming communities to adapt and survive in the face of challenges to their livelihoods, including globalization, commercialization of food production and climate change.

Common Ground Program also works with Feed Villages and has a demonstration farm. The farm is used for teaching organic farming techniques, and the food that is produced is used to feed orphans and vulnerable people.

Women's Empowerment Projects/Micro Loans
Women living in the developing world shoulder the heaviest burdens of poverty as a result of gender discrimination and social inequality. Yet despite these challenges, women frequently serve as the catalysts for creating positive social change. Through our loans, CGP supports projects designed to enable women to become agents of change, empowering them to transform their own lives and create lasting and meaningful change for themselves, their families and their communities.

Conservation of Fauna and Flora
Conservation of natural resources is key to our futures’ survival. CGP projects focuses on wildlife conservation, tree planting, advocacy and policy change in conservation issues.

Other on-going projects of CPG include: dairy production, animal husbandry, stream bank protection, academic research, home construction, brick making, cultural preservation, ethno-botany, etc.

Learn more about Common Ground Program ...