Our Approach

“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.” ― Joanna Macy

Giving society the true taste of community empowerment.

- THE SALT MOTTO
SALT approach to working with communities

SALT accompanies communities through deep and transformative processes based on holistic knowledge systems of the indigenous and local peoples both in schools and with communities. Through community dialogues, ecological maps and calendars and nature experiential learning processes, communities revive their indigenous knowledge and practices rooted in their Earth-centred methodologies. SALT approach is holistic and engages every aspect of humans; inner and outer, secular and sacred, matter and spirit, tangible and intangible, quality and quantity.
Depths and transformation are the cornerstones of the SALT work. As such, SALT processes have be deep and transformative. This means that aspects of people’s pasts, their traditions and understandings and practices that have been destroyed or denied are revived, discovered a new, owned and recognized. Through this world is seen again from a place of new understanding. Through SALT’s processes, there is the re-establishment of connection with culture and nature. Humans become part and parcel of the larger Earth’s communities. Killing Nature is killing self. For SALT, these realizations brings empowerment and resilience to the external threats that continue to plague communities and ecosystems in Kenya and Africa at large.
SALT acknowledges that communities are structured based on their cultural context and as such SALT chooses to work with these existing community traditional structures like clans.

SALT guiding principles
SALT’s Guiding Principles are anchored in the belief that true change and transformation is possible when individuals and communities are accompanied and given ample space to interrogate their mind-set with regard to self, culture and nature in order to foster confidence in themselves and self-realization. 

Through community dialogues, experiential learning and other appropriate methodologies, communities begin to experience cosmological change and start to connect with themselves, nature and their culture.

Through further learning, individuals and communities gain better insights into the understanding of their past. They become more aware of their present challenges and are able to develop and initiate appropriate home-grown solutions that are inspired and rooted into the real issues of their concerns. SALT believes that communities know what they are doing and have their own knowledge systems and traditional practices which they have lived with for millennia. SALT works to build on these and strengthen what communities already have for sustained improvement of their integrated livelihoods.

At the same time, SALT believes that communities can benefit from outside knowledge and practices as long as these are contextually analyzed and applied. For sustained change to happen, SALT believes that relationships with communities should be made as clear as possible right from onset. For this reason, those communities who chose to engage with SALT processes form an informed point of view right at the start. SALT discourages giving of handouts and other false and quick fix solutions to community challenges.

SALT encourages local ownership and leadership of development initiatives and works with indigenous peoples and local communities to strengthen their capacity to determine the kind of change that is appropriate to their needs. SALT ensures that individuals and communities revive appropriate governance structures that are accountable and transparent to all. 

SALT invests in enhancing community-led initiatives embedded in people’s culture and the traditional institutions. This creates a firm basis for the development of community priorities and the mechanism for scaling up good practices and accelerating community development. SALT believes that by networking individuals and communities and building community coalitions, these can have a voice that can influence policy and protect biodiversity, culture and their integrity.

SALT is an intentional and focused organization with a particular purpose towards Nature, indigenous peoples and local communities. SALT’s mandate is about deepening to attract potent individuals and communities so that they can engage with its work for wider impact.

IMG_7290