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A PAIR team member, his cap and shirt printed “For Every Pastoralist’s Future”, talks with a Turkana woman and children in Kopeto Village.

Pastoralist Adaptive Initiatives for Resilience

For every pastoralist’s future.

See how we work Meet our first scholar

Our mission

PAIR partners with pastoralist communities through participatory research to transform local priorities into solutions that fight hunger, improve health and well-being, promote equity and strengthen livelihoods.

Women in beaded collars place stones on a paper chart to show how many adults were sick or healthy in the past year.
participatory research,
in practice

Women rank who was sick and healthy in the past year · Peiteni Adakar · Photo: Ava Van Gelder

Our vision

A future where pastoralist communities live with dignity, grow in resilience and open pathways to opportunity, anchored in equality and shared humanity.

How we work

How we work

We don’t start with a programme. We start by listening.

Here’s what that looked like in Lokiriama, Turkana: from a focus group, to a finding, to a young woman back in education.

  1. 1

    Listen

    Communities set the measures

    In 2025 our Community One Health Index (COHI) research asked people in Lokiriama what health and well-being mean to them. Diana’s mother was in one of the focus groups.

    Women seated in a row on a woven mat during a COHI focus group discussion in Komio.
    A COHI women’s focus group · Komio, Turkana
  2. 2

    Find the priority

    Education came out on top

    Community members, especially women, named education as critical. School enrolment in Lokiriama was just:

    18.6% of girls

    26.2% of boys

    Women place stones on a paper chart to show how many girls in their community are in school.
    Women use stones to show how many girls are in school, and rank the reasons why · Lokiriama Centre · Photo: Ava Van Gelder
  3. 3

    Act

    The PAIR Education Scholarship

    In August 2026 we launched an end-to-end scholarship. Diana Lokol, 20, from Kopeto Village, is our first scholar. Her dream: a Diploma in Community Health Sciences.

    Diana Lokol, the first PAIR scholar, in her PAIR shirt.
    Our first scholar.
    Many more to come.
  4. 4

    Measure again

    Did it make a difference?

    Repeated COHI assessments track whether investments like this lead to measurable improvements over time, and the findings go back to the community at barazas.

    How COHI works

Where we work

Turkana and Marsabit. Starting where people asked us to.

We work from offices in Lodwar and Ngong, with communities in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands. New places come as communities invite us and funding allows.

Map of Kenya with Turkana and Marsabit counties highlighted, and pins at Lodwar, North Horr and Ngong.
County boundaries: geoBoundaries (public domain).

Our flagship initiatives

Diana Lokol and Dr. Evan Griffith sitting together outside.
Education Scholarship

Education today, resilience tomorrow.

End-to-end support for pastoralist girls and boys from primary school to university, with mentorship and a path back into their communities.

Read about the scholarship
PAIR researchers facilitate a COHI women’s focus group seated on mats under the trees.
COHI research

The Community One Health Index

A participatory tool that measures the health of people, livestock and dryland ecosystems against goals communities define themselves.

See the 2026 findings

Women’s voices, by design

Seven in ten voices in every assessment are women’s.

Gender equity and social inclusion guide our work. Our focus groups include equal numbers of women and men, and our household surveys centre women.

  • 448community members engaged in COHI assessments in Lokiriama and Loima, Turkana, in 2026, across seven settlements. About seven in ten were women. The two sub-counties have 41,711 and 107,172 people.
  • 320participants targeted in the next assessment, starting in North Horr, Marsabit County.
  • 30members of the Akwanga Self Help Group run the solar mill in Natoot.
  • 1PAIR scholar so far, with many more to come.

Women play a critical role in household food security and nutrition.

That is why our household surveys centre them.

People gathered around the new solar-powered mill in Natoot at its launch.

Also in the field

Reducing distance. Improving income.

In Natoot village, the Akwanga Self Help Group runs a solar milling service through PAIR’s partnership with Agsol. Families can now mill closer to home: less travel, lower costs, more income.

The solar mill in Natoot
Running

Solar milling, Natoot

Run by 30 members of the Akwanga Self Help Group since April 2026.

Starting

COHI in North Horr

Our next assessment, in Marsabit County: 320 participants targeted.

Planned

Compostable toilets

A COHI finding on sanitation: compostable toilets instead of pit latrines, which take far more time and resources to dig.

Highlights from the field

Notes from Turkana.

Writing and updates from our team, in the places where the work happens. All highlights

Elder Lokir with members of the Arumrum under a large tree in Komio.
Substack7 Aug 2026

Turkana… again

Dr. Evan Griffith on three weeks of COHI fieldwork in Lokiriama with the mobile settlement of Arumrum Alokir Ewoi, near the Uganda border, and why research should be part of change.

Read on Substack
A PAIR researcher leading a participatory session with Turkana women.
Facebook9 Sep 2026

Julieta Kalale, Community Researcher

One of our PAIR Community Researchers just earned her Community Health degree at Turkana University College.