Nur M’nasria: Storytelling, Fashion, and Community Rebuilding Lives in Kenya

In 2015, Nur M’nasria traveled to Nairobi for a filming assignment. She had no intention of staying, and no plan to build anything. Her career as a television producer had already taken her to more than 30 countries, and Kenya was simply the next destination. But when she walked into a slum and saw children living in conditions no child should have to survive, something shifted inside her that she could not undo.

A decade later, that shift has become Nisria, a registered nonprofit in both the United States and Kenya. Its Kwetu Haven rescue program has reunified 100 children with their families in four years. Alongside it, M’nasria has built three social enterprises run by the women she serves, all of them funding the rescue and reunification work: Maisha by Nisria, a sustainable avant-garde fashion studio whose work has been featured in Vogue Italy; AHADI by Nisria, a jewelry initiative run by artisans in Kibera; and Kipenzi by Nisria, a handmade pet accessories brand made from upcycled textiles.

Most recently, she produced SHE_IS_RED, a fashion film designed and made entirely by young women from her vocational training program. The film follows women through rage, power, and kindness, and has already drawn international attention.

M’nasria is a Tunisian-American storyteller, media producer, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur who was raised across six countries and has been based in the UAE for over 26 years. She began her career producing Khawatir on MBC, the Arab world’s most watched Ramadan show, across six seasons. Since then she has worked as a producer, executive producer, and media consultant for organizations including the BBC, the United Nations, Mastercard, and Sephora. But the work she is most known for now is the work nobody hired her to do, the work she started because a filming assignment broke something open inside her. Her guiding philosophy has never changed: when we do good, we do it with dignity.

From Filming Assignment to Founding Nisria

M’nasria founded Nisria in 2016 after watching children’s homes across Kenya cause more harm than good. She describes the pattern plainly: neglect, exploitation, and children abandoned the moment they aged out.

“I watched children age out of institutions into nothing, no family, no one to call when life got hard, no future, no safety or protection,” she says. “This is abandonment on a delay.”

Nisria is a nonprofit organization based in Gilgil, Kenya. Its core belief is that children should not stay in institutions rather than be reunited with their families and loved ones. “A child needs a family to be seen, grow, and thrive,” M’nasria says.

To make that possible, Nisria works with the local police station and children’s office to trace and track where every abandoned or lost child comes from. Based on the story and background, the team works toward a solution that is in favor of the child.

Kwetu Haven, which means “our home,” is the name of the rescue home program. Instead of building another institution, it reunites children in crisis with their own families and supports those families to stay together.

Why Keeping Families Together Is More Powerful Than Building More Children's Homes

M’nasria believes most people misunderstand why families fall apart. “Most people assume a family fell apart because someone stopped caring,” she says. “In my experience, that is rarely the case, and many children that are at children’s homes are actually lost cases.”

A mother does not give up her child because she stopped loving them, M’nasria explains. She does it because she ran out of income, resources, shelter, or support, and saw no other option.

So when Nisria finds that family, the team does not simply hand the child back. They work with the mother or guardian through a Micro Fund, vocational training, sponsoring the child’s education, or providing food support, so the same crisis does not repeat itself.

“A children’s home can house a child, but only a family, given the right support, can raise that child with love, safety, and dignity,” she says. “That is why family reunification is not a softer option to institutional care. It is more demanding and more costly. It asks us to fix the actual problem instead of just removing the child from it.”

Building Enterprises Where Women Are the Builders, Not the Beneficiaries

Under Nisria, three social enterprises put vulnerable women at the center of production rather than at the receiving end of aid. M’nasria points out that the women she works with were never short on creativity. They were short on resources and access, to training, to markets, to capital.

“So instead of giving them aid, we built them a workshop,” she says.

Maisha, AHADI, and Kipenzi are social enterprise programs under Nisria. The women who train, sew, and craft go through six months of vocational training, then produce real collections and products that sell in Nairobi stores, online, and in pop-ups across Kenya and the UAE. Their income supports those hired full time, and most of the share funds the rescue and reunification work.

“When a woman is the one building the product and earning from it, she is empowered and is capable of doing anything to keep her family together and her children safe and contained,” M’nasria says. “She breaks generational cycles of poverty.”

SHE_IS_RED: A Fashion Film About Rage, Power, and Kindness

M’nasria’s newest fashion film, SHE_IS_RED, follows women through rage, power, and kindness. It was designed and made entirely by young women from her vocational training program.

“I wanted the film to tell the story of our new collection SHE_IS_RED, where it embodies the different emotions a woman goes through,” she says. “A woman can have rage that fuels her power, yet can still be soft and kind.”

Red, she notes, is a color used across cultures and traditions. Women wore it in weddings, gathered in red tents, made it into lipstick, and had it in their hands and hair as henna. “Red is the color of blood, red is the color of fire, red is the color of the land, and all these are elements that represent the feminine in her rage, power, and kindness.”

Every piece in the film was designed and made by young women from the vocational training program. They chose the fabric, the cut, and the story it tells. M’nasria believes that when someone in London, Dubai, or Nairobi watches it, they could feel these emotions and stages a woman goes through and relate to it without any words. She credits the film’s director, Bashir Bashir, with translating that into a visual representation.

What She Wants Every Woman Who Feels Too Small to Know

M’nasria did not start with a plan to reunify and support hundreds of children. She started with one child and a curiosity about why systems kept failing at-risk children.

“I didn’t know what I was doing, or if I was doing the right thing,” she says. “Yet I listened carefully to my intuition, trusted it, and followed it.”

The work, she explains, is very much based on a woman’s instinct to care, protect, love, and nurture. It is built on trusting the process, believing in the team, and showing up every day, even when nobody believed in them or thought they could do it with the limited resources they had.

People did not think they could turn a broken system around and make it work in favor of the children they serve. To a woman who feels too small for a problem this size, M’nasria offers this: “You do not need to solve the whole problem on day one. You need one working solution, done properly, for one person. Do that, learn from it, then do it again. And most importantly, believe in yourself, believe in your community, and just show up every day with persistence and consistency, and the whole world will eventually follow through.”