A quiet charity, doing patient work.
Founded in 2008 by a small group of teachers and volunteers, Moving Mountains Trust has spent nearly two decades working alongside rural communities in Kenya.
Depth beats breadth.
We work in a small number of places for a long time. Our minimum working horizon in any partnership is ten years, and our oldest partnerships are now approaching two decades. This is not a strategy — it is a conviction.
The alternative — spreading thinly across dozens of countries, chasing the newest emergency, building buildings without maintenance plans — has been tried by the aid sector for fifty years, and the results are visible in every abandoned classroom and rusting borehole across the continent.
We chose a different path. Slower, less photogenic, and — we believe — more honest.
Listen first
Every partnership begins with six months of listening — before any commitment, before any spending.
Local ownership
Every school, clinic, and cooperative we support is governed by a community committee with real authority — including the authority to fire us.
Long horizons
We plan in decades, not fiscal years. Every construction budget includes a ten-year maintenance reserve.
From one classroom in Solio to forty-two schools.
The Trust began in 2008 when our founder, Alistair Hunt, spent a summer teaching in a two-room school in the Solio settlement. He came home determined to help rebuild it. He returned the following year, and the year after that. Sixteen years later, that first school is one of forty-two we support across three counties.
What began as a single classroom is now a network of education, healthcare, sport, women's cooperatives, youth development, and environmental work — all rooted in the same handful of communities where we began.
We remain deliberately small. Fewer than thirty staff across two countries. A board of trustees that meets monthly. A finance function that reconciles every disbursement by hand. And a rule, unwritten but universally observed, that no decision about a community is ever made without a community member in the room.
A team measured in years, not headcount.
Alistair founded Moving Mountains Trust in 2008 after a decade working in East African community development.
Amina leads our field teams across Kenya and has been with the Trust since 2011.
Peter oversees our education strategy and the annual learning outcomes review.
Emily leads finance, compliance, and donor reporting from our London office.
James built the Black Cats sports programme from a single team into a regional network.
Sarah manages placements, safeguarding, and pre-departure training for all volunteers.
A small charity with room for good people.
Whether you have five pounds a month, three months of your time, or a lifetime of teaching experience — we would be glad to hear from you.