About us

TABS International

TABS international is a new charity set up by a group of people who have been supporting church led projects in Kenya for a number of years. Several of the group also work for a charity housing association in the UK, Christian Alliance Housing, working with vulnerable people who are homeless.

It seemed that there were many similarities between the work we were engaged in at home with the work we saw being undertaken in Kenya. Essentially we were both committed to alleviating the conditions of people who were disadvantaged and in need by getting alongside them and supporting them to achieve their full potential. The differences I suppose were related to scale of need and the social networks available. In the UK there is recourse to benefits, entitlements to housing and systems in place to assist. In Kenya there is very little of anything and people in need live on the very edge of existence between life and death.

An idea emerged of linking our two worlds through providing opportunities for disadvantaged young people in the UK to participate in an exceptional experience by travelling to Kenya and working alongside Kenyans to deliver some of the support in the projects. The hope was that not only would the young people have an experience otherwise unattainable for them normally, but they would also gain in skills, knowledge and self-development.

So, after much fundraising effort, in January 2006 four nervous young people from around the UK who had experienced homelessness and other disadvantages travelled with six leaders to a slum in Nairobi where in 3 weeks they built from scratch a two-storey block canteen building for a school in a slum project. They coped with heat, incredible hard work, danger in travelling on Nairobi roads, distress from what they saw, fatigue and much more with stoicism, enthusiasm, humility and plenty of laughter.

Eighteen months later they have continued to build on that experience and are taking their lives forward positively in ways they could not have imagined before their Kenya trip. They gained enormously, but also gave generously of their time, effort and commitment and it has been a joy to see their blossoming.

As a consequence of the success of that trip and at the urging of the young people who joined with us we decided to set up a charity whose aims would be to give young people in difficult circumstances in the UK similar experiences. Our aim is that through helping others they will also help themselves. So in April 2007 TABS International was formed.

As part of the charity’s ethos we only work with projects that have already shown their ability to help themselves, with a strong leadership team and where the community is able to use what we do in a sustainable way to take their own development forward. In addition we look to work alongside the local community as a joint team effort.