About Us

The Trust is distinctive in being set up as a cooperative venture between Kuria and ourselves, forming two independent but linked associations – the Tatwa Omaahe Welfare Society (TOWS) in Kenya and the Tatwa Maahe Educational Trust (TMET) in UK. Today, there are four TOWS self-help groups, one in each of the four clans, who nominate needy students for TMET bursaries.

Mathias Mwita
Key to this process is our local coordinator, Mathias Mwita, who liaises between the TOWS groups and ourselves and forwards their nominees to the Trust for decision.

With this linked structure, the Trust is able to operate with minimal overheads as members of both associations in Kenya and UK are volunteers. Mathias has administered the Trust in Kenya since 2005 alongside his role as Social Development Officer for Kuria East. For TMET, Mathias ensures that the money sent for school fees is received by local schools, monitors student progress and holds an annual Get-Together party which serves as an important gathering for sharing information and for students to exchange the textbooks provided by the Trust. In recent years email has helped enormously in facilitating contact and dealing with issues as they occur.

This is supplemented by biennial visits by one or two Trustees to meet Mathias, our students, TOWS groups and discuss the work of the Trust. During these visits, we are able to develop policy for the future, especially important for our Library and other projects, and to introduce other measures such as the provision of textbooks and student mentoring, as well as dealing with hardship cases and difficulties as these arise.

[right]Mathias introduces Pippa Price to Rael Gisieri and her new baby, Cresensia. We supported Rael through secondary school and college. in 2016 she was working with Mathias in the Social Development Office in Kekonga.

Trustees
The Trust was established in 1991 by the anthropologist Malcolm Ruel who established it as a measure of the affection and gratitude he felt for Kuria among whom he had done fieldwork. He was joined as a trustee by another anthropologist, Suzette Heald, who after Malcolm’s death took over as administrator of the Trust (TMET) in 2010. Like Malcolm, she has extensive knowledge and contacts in Kuria. Today, there are 5 other trustees, three of whom are Malcolm’s daughters and have visited Kuria. As a UK charity we thus have in-depth knowledge of the people and conditions in the local area. The cooperative structure of the charity helps to maintain this knowledge and to ensure our operations represent joint endeavours and ambitions.

Current Trustees:

Jo Ward (secretary) trustee since 1995, works in education and lives in Northampton.

Pippa Price, current Chair of trustees, is a translator/interpreter, living in Sussex.
Sally Caunt, trustee since 2011, lives and works in the Scottish borders.
Karen Heald, trustee since 2011, is an administrator and lives in Sussex.
Joshua Price, trustee, teacher.
TMET meeting, from left to right: Pippa Price,
Sally Caunt, Jo Ward and Jean Smith.