Voices Heard, Futures Built: Build Hope Organization Hosts Three-Day Community Engagement in Kakuma.

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Kakuma Refugee Camp, Turkana County, Kenya Build Hope Organization (BHO) recently brought together parents, elders, and local leaders in Kakuma for a landmark three-day community engagement a series of structured sessions centered on listening, dialogue, and collective action for the future of children, youth, and families in one of East Africa’s most populous refugee settlements.

The initiative reflects a core conviction at the heart of BHO’s work: that durable change must be rooted in the voices of the communities it serves guided by the wisdom of elders, the commitment of parents, and the leadership of community protectors.

The Setting: A Community Under Pressure

Kakuma is not simply a refugee camp. It is one of the world’s largest forced displacement settings and one of its most complex. According to Kenya’s Department of Refugee Services, as of May 2025, the Kakuma-Kalobeyei hosting area registered a combined population of 306,414 individuals, comprising 224,335 in Kakuma Camp, 79,685 in Kalobeyei Settlement, and 2,394 in Eldoret (Kenya DRS, May 2025 Statistics Package).

The camp, first established in 1992 to host unaccompanied minors fleeing the war in Sudan, today shelters refugees from South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, and other nations (UNHCR Kenya, Kakuma Refugee Camp).

The weight of that reality falls hardest on the most vulnerable. According to UNHCR population data from Q1 2025, children constitute approximately 58% of refugees and asylum-seekers in the Kakuma-Kalobeyei area a staggering proportion of young lives shaped entirely by displacement (Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund [KKCF], 2025). Globally, UNHCR estimates that of the 123.2 million forcibly displaced people recorded at the end of 2024, 49 million — or 40% — are children under 18 (UNHCR Refugee Data Finder, 2025).

In Kenya specifically, UNHCR reports that over 50% of refugees are of school age (4–17 years), yet despite significant investments in education, an estimated 50% of school-age refugees are still out of school. Transition rates to secondary education are especially alarming only 23% of refugee children in Kakuma successfully move on to secondary school, according to UNHCR Kenya’s education data (UNHCR Kenya, Education). This is not a crisis of capacity alone. It is a crisis of access, equity, and protection.

For women and girls, the challenges compound further. Research published in BMC Public Health (2024) confirms that refugees and internally displaced women in Africa are among the most vulnerable groups to gender-based violence, with displacement, economic fragility, and the collapse of protective institutions all serving as contributing factors.

In Kakuma specifically, UN Women notes that women and girls face frequent cases of sexual and gender-based violence at water points, during firewood collection, and within the home with the camp’s Gender-Based Violence Support Centre receiving 15–20 reported cases per month, a figure widely understood to represent significant under-reporting (UN Women Africa, 2022).

These are the realities that BHO works within every day — and the same realities that made this three-day community engagement not just meaningful, but urgent.

Day 1 — Listening & Understanding

The first day set a deliberate tone. Rather than arriving with ready-made answers, BHO opened with questions — creating space for parents and community leaders to speak freely about their lived experiences, challenges, and hopes for their children.

This approach is backed by decades of humanitarian practice. UNHCR’s own programming frameworks emphasize that community engagement and participatory assessment are the foundations of effective, accountable humanitarian response.

As UNHCR’s 2024 Global Report notes, the most effective way to protect people who have been forced to flee is to give communities “an opportunity to organize, participate, and represent their own interests” (UNHCR, Global Report 2024). In 2024, 66 of UNHCR’s operations worldwide prioritized this community-driven engagement model recognizing that top-down responses without community buy-in regularly fail to deliver sustained protection.

For BHO, Day 1 was about doing exactly that: laying the foundation of trust. Every voice was heard, every story treated as valuable, and every concern documented because you cannot design solutions to problems you have not truly listened to.

Day 2 — Dialogue & Collaboration

On the second day, conversations deepened. Participants moved from sharing their personal realities to collectively exploring practical solutions. Ideas were exchanged, perspectives challenged, and collaborative thinking took shape around the community’s most pressing issues education, child protection, and opportunities for youth and women.

These themes are not incidental. They sit at the intersection of Kakuma’s most documented challenges:

On education: UNHCR Kenya reports that while primary school gross enrollment in Kakuma has exceeded 80% thanks to investments by UNHCR and development partners, serious gaps persist particularly at secondary level and beyond. Only 3% of refugees in Kenya are able to attend university (UNHCR Kenya, Education).

The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), which manages seven secondary schools in Kakuma hosting more than 15,000 learners, has documented that some of these schools have as few as 26–27% girls enrolled reflecting deep structural barriers to girls’ education at this level (JRS Kenya, 2024).

On youth opportunity: Research published in Discover Education (Springer Nature, 2026) found that while primary access has improved, higher education for refugees in Kakuma “remains all but unattainable” for the majority of students, citing linguistic barriers, missing documentation from conflict-affected origin countries, and financial exclusion as key obstacles.

On women’s protection: The need to “strengthen opportunities for women” acknowledged in Day 2 is echoed strongly in published research. A 2025 PLOS Medicine study examining violence among Somali women in Kakuma found that food insecurity directly increases women’s vulnerability to violence, as household stress exacerbates gender inequalities and erodes protective social structures. The study also found that fluctuating funding and ration cuts which intensified in early 2025 following reductions in international aid directly compound these risks (PMC, 2025).

Bringing community members together to co-develop responses to these challenges reflects the approach BHO has championed since its founding: programs designed with people, not for them.

Day 3 — Commitment & Action

The final day brought the three days of engagement to a meaningful close. Leaders and community protectors gathered not merely to acknowledge the challenges they had discussed, but to take visible, shared ownership of the path forward.

The significance of this moment extends beyond symbolism. Research from UNHCR’s operational data consistently shows that community-based protection mechanisms where local leaders and elders take active responsibility for safety and welfare are among the most effective and sustainable forms of protection in camp settings.

A UNHCR-cited study on intimate partner violence responses in Kakuma noted that formal humanitarian systems work best when they operate in close cooperation with community structures, not in isolation from them (PubMed, IPV in Kakuma). Day 3 was, in effect, building exactly that bridge.

What emerged was a demonstration of unity and collective resolve — a strong, visible commitment to building a community that is resilient, inclusive, and empowered from within.

Why This Matters

The context surrounding this engagement is increasingly urgent. In early 2025, Kakuma experienced protests and clashes after food allocations were reduced to just 40% of the basic minimum level following cuts in international humanitarian funding, particularly the freezing of U.S. aid (Humanium, 2025).

The cuts to USAID under the Trump Administration in 2025 caused what researchers and field observers described as starvation and deepening despair across the camp (Wikipedia, Kakuma, 2025).

In this environment, the work of community-based organizations like Build Hope Organization carries extraordinary weight. While international funding landscapes shift and large systems struggle to respond with agility, locally-rooted organizations that have built trust within communities remain a critical lifeline.

BHO’s three-day engagement was not a conference. It was an act of solidarity one that said to parents, elders, and community leaders: your wisdom matters, your voice shapes this work, and your leadership is essential to the future of the children and youth here.

As BHO continues to deliver education, vocational training, child protection, and family support programming across Kakuma, the relationships and commitments built over these three days will directly strengthen the foundation that makes all of that work sustainable.

Sources

  • Kenya Department of Refugee Services. Kenya Statistics Package – 31 May 2025. Nairobi: Government of Kenya / UNHCR Kenya, 2025.
  • UNHCR Kenya. Kakuma Refugee Camp. unhcr.org/ke/kakuma-refugee-camp.
  • UNHCR Kenya. Education. unhcr.org/ke/what-we-do/education.
  • UNHCR. Global Report 2024. unhcr.org/publications/global-report-2024.
  • UNHCR. Refugee Statistics – Key Indicators. unhcr.org/refugee-statistics. Accessed April 2026.
  • Humanium. Generations of Children Growing Up in the Kakuma Refugee Camp. humanium.org. Published June 2025.
  • Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund (KKCF). Gender-Based Violence and Child Protection. kkcfke.org. Accessed 2025.
  • UN Women Africa. Sexual Violence Convictions a Reality for Kakuma’s Refugee Community. africa.unwomen.org. Published June 2022.
  • Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS Kenya). Breaking Down Barriers: Increasing Girls’ Access to and Completion of Secondary Education in Kakuma. jrs.net. Published 2024.
  • UNHCR. Education as a Catalyst for Refugee and Host Community Integration in Kenya. unhcr.org/blogs. Published November 2024.
  • Lukasiak M, et al. Exploring Perceptions and Experiences of Gender-Based Violence Among Women in a Refugee Camp Setting in Uganda. PLOS ONE 19(12), 2024.
  • PMC / PLOS Medicine. Using a Human Security Lens to Examine Experiences of Violence Against Women in Long-Term Encampment. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Accepted 2025.
  • Springer Nature / Discover Education. University-INGO Partnerships for Refugee Education: The Case of Elimisha Kakuma. link.springer.com. Published January 2026.
  • Wikipedia. Kakuma. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakuma. Updated 2025/2026.

Build Hope Organization (BHO) is a community-based nonprofit dedicated to uplifting vulnerable populations — especially children, youth, and women — through education, protection, and sustainable livelihoods. To learn more or to support their work, visit buildhopeo.org.

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