Member Q+A: Meet The Mobiliser Of Our Newest Cluster!

DOMINIC OKOTH MBAGO is the leader of the newly launched Kitale Cluster in Kenya. He is gifted in many things and is passionate about brining change to communities. Here, he tells us about himself, the Cluster and what they hope to achieve.

Tell us about yourself!

I am married and blessed with three children; a daughter and two sons. I am an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) expert by training, community change agent by passion, and a pastor by calling. I have worked with several organizations as community change agent including: Uraia Trust as a Civic Educator, Asubuhi Njema as Founder and Director, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung as Peace Ambassador, Ahadi Kenya as Budget Champion, and Oasis of Christ Life Church as Pastor and community change agent.

I have also worked as a volunteer missionary in Tanzania for four years where I helped start an English medium school, planted a church and set up community projects.

Currently, I live and are settled in Kitale after receiving a call from God leave my paternal home in Kericho to go and serve the people of Kitale.

Quite the resume! How did you come across Arukah and what attracted you to the network? 

I came to know about Arukah through Robins Odiyo's (Cluster Development Lead) and Dan Rono's (Arukah Trustee) social media. I worked with both of them in Kericho during our youth initiatives. We interacted a lot and implemented many projects while I worked in my organization, Asubuhi Njema. I reach out to Robins who shared Arukah's mission and vision.

Tell us more about the Kitale Cluster and why you started it. 

The Cluster consists of 12 groups which include women groups, youth groups, people living with disabilities, farmers, teen mothers and table banking groups.

Robins and I started talking about what Clusters are all about 2 years ago. He trained me and once I understood the vision, I shared it with the many groups that I have been working with as a civic educator. Having observed closely the plight that many of these group members go through, having to battle daily, I felt that it's important to tap into the idea of Arukah to help them synchronize their objectives while establishing networking. In this way I aimed at reducing struggles while increasing impact to members and community at large.

You had your official Cluster launch recently. What have been able to do and achieve so far?

Yes, we launched in late 2025. So far, we have focused mainly on building teamwork, networking, and resource mobilizations to ensure each group is able to realize their aspiration. We have been limited by resource and thus we have relied heavily on volunteerism to ensure those individuals groups meet their targets. One example is that we decided to join a group of People With Disabilities (PWD) to push for registration of those living with disability to the National Council for Persons With Disabilities (NCPWD). We collectively demanded for the release the funds to those who had not been paid. As a result, the county office helped them in the process and now, some members have started receiving their monthly stipend.

Amazing. And what challenges have you experienced in your journey?

So far the biggest challenge is limited resources. Members struggle with mobility to come for meetings. Dependency and illiteracy levels are high, and there is too much exposure to health risks amongst the vulnerable groups without support and commitment from key government officials.

How do you hope to collectively solve them?

We hope to solve them progressively. First, we hope to achieve financial stability for the Cluster through income generating activities. From these, we will derive seed capital with emphasis on growth, increase and progression. We also intend to have the Cluster be fully functional with offices and administration so that we can expand our impact to the community at large.

What do you hope to achieve in the future?

We hope to start a dairy goat project and boost ongoing table banking activities amongst the members. The goat project will be managed centrally by the leaders to a level where it will sustain functional offices and administrations of the Cluster. The proceeds from the goat milk will be used to partly facilitate administrative work while the rest will be divided into investment, savings and seed funds to member groups. Each member group is expected to use the seed money to sustain and multiply it for the benefit of other groups.

Nice! What do you like doing outside work?

I like spending time with my family, singing, writing and reading. I love books. I am also a footballer and spend time training my sons and other young boys. Lasltly, I love visiting the sick and needy of the community as time avails.

Thank you so much Dominic and welcome to the network! We are excited at what you and the Kitale Cluster will achieve!

Learn more about the Kitale Cluster here