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A university in Embu that is not useful to Embu has misread its own charter. Health clinics in the county, gardens against food deserts, climate advocacy in schools, and half a billion shillings spent deliberately with local suppliers.
From the Community Gardens Initiative report, The Flashlight, Issue No. 14.
What went outward
Figures reported for the 2025/2026 financial year.
Gardens against food deserts
On 19 May 2026 the University hosted the Community Gardens Initiative Project meeting, bringing together researchers and partners from Chuka University and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff to work on agricultural resilience, nutrition and practical farming.
The initiative is led by Dr. Rebecca Yegon of the Department of Land, Water and Management with Prof. Geoffrey Gathungu, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Studies at Chuka University. Dr. Harris Karleah of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff presented on food deserts, community gardening and student involvement in practical agricultural learning.
Visits, clinics and projects, as they happen
Including the University’s visit to St Monica children’s home, on film.
How the University reaches the county
Since 2022 the Department of Community Health has partnered with the Embu County Professionals Development Association to run annual clinics offering health screening and health education. Students take part as part of their training.
Students are placed at Embu Teaching and Referral Hospital and other health facilities across Embu County.
The Centre for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation takes its work to schools, alongside the Climate Innovation Hub.
A minimum of 40 per cent of procurement expenditure is reserved for locally made goods. In 2025/2026 local content reached KES 556,071,963.24 against a target of KES 378,744,533.20.
Extension is half the Directorate’s name. Field work, farm demonstrations and advisory services carry research findings to the people who can use them.
The Technology Transfer Office counts 93 student entrepreneurs already running businesses and 25 innovations under validation, several of them aimed at problems in the county.
Note for Corporate Affairs. Community work is the University’s most visible activity in Embu and its least documented online. Everything on this page came from The Flashlight, Issue No. 14. There is no running record of outreach activity anywhere on the live estate, no photographs indexed by event, and no contact point for a school, hospital or county office that wants to ask the University for something. A single intake form and a dated log would fix all three.