Why the soul of CREAW should never be lost in over 400 years!

CREAW founder Ann Njogu. [Courtesy]

Institutions do not collapse all at once. Most often, they drift. They drift slowly from their founding truths. From the values that gave them purpose. From the sacrifices that built them. One day, they wake up to discover they still have offices, logos, programmes, and funding — but no longer remember who they are. 

That is the danger facing many civic institutions today, including women’s rights organisations across Africa. And it is why, at the launch of CREAW’s Strategic Plan 2026–2030, I found myself returning not to policy language or donor frameworks, but to memory. 

Because memory is what protects identity. I am Ann Njogu, principal founder of the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW). After many years away from a CREAW platform, I returned recently not to give a report, but to ask a question: what is the soul of this organisation, and who keeps it safe? 

The answer lives in the stories of the women — and the struggles — that shaped us. 

The first story is Nduta’s. In 2002, long before CREAW had funding or recognition, we encountered one of our first extreme domestic violence cases. Nduta’s partner had poured sulphuric acid over 85 per cent of her body and locked her inside their house in Mwiki, Kasarani. A neighbour eventually raised the alarm. 

Nduta spent months in Kenyatta National Hospital. We visited her daily. We listened to her fears — for her children, for her future, and for her life. Her attacker had promised to return and finish what he had started. Then Nduta died. 

She left behind two sons: Patrick, then fourteen, and Ayub, only eight months old. We had no donor funding at the time, but we tried to help where we could. Today, Patrick is a teacher in Kasarani with a family of his own. Ayub, now twenty-four, is interning in Limuru. 

Their lives matter because they reveal what feminist work truly is. It is not charity. It is not branding. It is not conferences or polished language. It is standing with people through terror, grief, and uncertainty — even when there is no money, no visibility, and no guarantee of success. 

Nduta also taught us something larger: that responding to violence case by case was not enough. We had to go upstream — into constitutional reform, legal advocacy, and democratic struggle itself. Because whenever rights are clawed back in one corner, every other right eventually comes under threat. That became the soul of CREAW. Not the logo. Not the funding. The soul. 

The second story belongs to Judy Thongori. In January 2011, President Mwai Kibaki nominated four men to the country’s highest justice offices — Chief Justice, Attorney General, Director of Public Prosecutions, and Controller of Budget — despite a new Constitution promising equality and inclusion. 

The next morning, Judy called me furious. I was already reaching for the phone to call her. We met over coffee at Yaya Centre with lawyer Elisha Ongoya. Before the coffee turned cold, we had a plan. Judy and Ongoya would lead the legal strategy. CREAW would mobilise women’s organisations, human rights defenders, and the media. 

Eight organisations took the President of the Republic to court. Justice Daniel Musinga ruled the nominations unconstitutional, affirming that women had been excluded in violation of Article 27. The nominations were withdrawn. That victory mattered not simply because of the judgment, but because it reflected what Judy represented.

She was never interested in symbolism for its own sake. She fought to dismantle oppressive laws and build better ones. Quietly, persistently, and often without applause. Today, many organisations celebrate their founders only in speeches and anniversaries. Yet institutions dishonour their founders whenever they invoke their names while abandoning the values those names stood for. 

Judy Thongori’s legacy is not a branding exercise. It is a standard and that standard demands difficult self-examination. Are our values truly lived? Or have they become performance language crafted for reports and audiences? Are we still courageous in the cases we choose, the truths we tell, and the people we honour? 

The final story is about time. Years ago, I spoke publicly about building CREAW not for the next five years, but for the next four hundred years. Some people laughed at the idea. Others looked puzzled. But I meant every word. 

Four hundred years from now, every person currently associated with this organisation will be gone and forgotten. Yet somewhere, there will still be women facing injustice. There will still be abuse, exclusion, inequality, and violence — even if the forms have changed. 

The question is whether institutions like CREAW will still exist with enough integrity, memory, and courage to respond. That future cannot survive on goodwill alone. It requires structures that protect institutional identity across generations. 

Because everything we fought to build — often at enormous personal cost — can quietly disappear if nobody is tasked with guarding its founding purpose. Some of us were arrested. Some brutalised. Some burned out before burnout even had a name. We inherited strength from women like Mekatilili wa Menza, Muthoni wa Kirima, Mukami Kimathi, Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru, Wangari Maathai, and Winnie Mandela. We owe future generations the same inheritance: institutions that remain transformative, feminist, credible, and brave. 

Not hollow imitations of themselves. That is why I proposed establishment of a council of trustees bringing together current leadership and organisational elders as guardians of CREAW’s institutional identity. 

Not to resist change. Institutions must evolve. But evolution without memory becomes erosion and erosion is how institutions lose their souls. The future of women’s rights movements in Kenya will not depend only on funding or strategy documents. It will depend on whether organisations remain anchored to truth — especially the uncomfortable truth about who built them, what they sacrificed, and why they existed in the first place. 

Because in the end, the only tribute that lasts four hundred years is truth.