In December 2003, Community Aid international started work on building a Community Development Centre in Bondo District in western Kenya – near Lake Victoria. The goals were to: have a permanent facility for human resource development through training of local school leavers who are unable to secure opportunity for further studies elsewhere; and to establish a permanent facility as a regional springboard for CAI’s activities in that part of the country.

Today CAI uses the centre as its regional head office, which gives it a comparative advantage regarding institutional capacity in the NGO sector. The Centre has adequate workshop and seminar rooms and more to enable it run its famous J9 Young Entrepreneurs Programme in which it selects young adults and launches them into business with loans and business development services.

Located in a typical village and sitting on a highway to major urban areas, surrounded with a quite natural environment, and with top of the range self-contained rooms, excellent catering services, internet services and cable television, among other modern facilities, the CA Centre offers unmatched opportunity for foreign and local volunteers wishing to work with CAI in its development programmes, tourists, academics on long stay, and any other visitors.

With the centre in the middle of a poor community, we have been able to realise a tremendous impact in community development. Apart from providing direct and indirect employment opportunities, the CA Centre currently plays an important role in community mobilization and facilitation of different development activities. It is the meeting point for the community on all development activities in the area.

The CA Centre is the place for our coordination and operations of the following development activities: a community- initiated water project for the whole location; a free fertilizer project for boosting agricultural productivity funded by the Japanese government to poor farmers; it is the holding ground for a food aid project in partnership with World Food Programme to households and schools with orphaned and vulnerable children; it is the action centre for a roof-catchment water project for households with the burden of orphaned and vulnerable children, the project builds water tanks for the target households.

Having the CAI Centre has enabled Community Aid International to attract development partners and donors, volunteers and interns to work with us.