Tuli fights poverty by creating sustainable jobs in East Africa. We believe that traditional aid methods, while noble, are a bandage and not a solution to the enormous problem of global poverty. Many nonprofit organizations do not audit their work for impact, and many charitable projects sit abandoned across East Africa. Considering how much money has been pumped into the developing world over the last several decades, and considering the fact that the problem is still massive, it is clear that something is not working.

Tuli believes that job creation and economic growth are the key to ending poverty — for good. Our business exists to create steady, fair-wage jobs for tenacious and talented people in East Africa.

We also believe that the people best equipped to help communities are those who are a part of them. While Tuli is an American company, we work alongside our locally-hired leadership teams to ensure our artisans’ needs are being met. While our US team is key to the Tuli method because it provides our artisans with a global market for their crafts, we do not feel that we know better than Kenyans and Ugandans what their country most needs. We hire our entire management team locally, instead of sending members of our US team to live in East Africa like other organizations do, taking a job that could easily be done by a local. We follow their advice as we set wages, track our artisans’ progress rising out of poverty.

Tuli’s mission is to empower resourceful, hard-working people in both Kenya and Uganda to earn long-term, sustainable incomes and, in doing so, fight poverty. We track our artisans’ lifestyles to ensure we are truly enacting the change we preach, and we strive for all our artisans to meet both their immediate needs, like food and shelter, and their long-term needs, like savings accounts and higher education.