Survivor-Led · Trauma-Informed · Culturally Rooted
Survivor-Led · Trauma-Informed · Culturally Rooted
Founder’s Story
I grew up in the Kikuyu community in Kenya — the same community where I am now building the Women Village of Peace. I did not choose that coincidence. I think it chose me.
As a child, I watched my mother survive. My father beat her. She stayed — because the dowry had been paid, because that is what women did, because she already had many children, because there was no other story available to her. I watched my neighbors survive the same way. I watched my sisters. I watched the cycle repeat itself in every direction I looked.
I was a girl in a community where boys had privilege and girls had to ask permission just to dream. Education was not freely given to me. My mother, a tea farmer, whose wages my father could take, believed in my education anyway. She fought for it quietly, the way women in those communities fight: without anyone noticing, without anyone giving her credit.
I decided I was going to school. And I was going to leave.
● NAIROBI
At 17 years, I left and went to Nairobi alone for the first time, in search of education and something better. There, I experienced exploitation, sexual violence, and became pregnant as a teen. The future I had imagined for myself suddenly felt out of reach.
The dream I had been chasing shattered the moment I needed it most.
I spent years trying to survive in Nairobi — a young girl, a baby, no education, no job, no safety net. The cycle of violence I had watched my whole childhood did not stop when I left home. It followed me, because I had never seen anything else.
I came close to homelessness.
And then someone reached out her hand.
● THE TURNING POINT
An American woman, a photographer, a well-wisher, someone who saw me when I felt invisible — told me for the first time that I could become something. She meant it. She backed it up. She helped me get back to school. She sent me to college. She worked with me, not for me.
“For the first time, someone told me that as a woman, I could become something. I have never forgotten what that felt like — and I have spent my life making sure other women feel it too.”
That experience changed everything I understood about what one person can do for another. I studied Counseling psychology because of her. I wanted to understand healing — how it works, why it is so hard, what it truly requires.
I wanted to become the person she had been for me, and offer that to the girls in my community who were still surviving the same things I had survived.
● THE WORK BEGINS — 2019
In 2019, I founded Wounded Healers Kenya. I started sharing my story. I started working with girls escaping child marriage and early pregnancy, trying to get them back to school, back to the dream that life had interrupted for them the same way it had interrupted it for me.
I had seen what education could do. I had lived it. And I knew it could do the same for them.
Girls who had been told their story was over were going back to school. Young mothers who had been abandoned were finding community. Women who had never been told they mattered were learning that they did.
I had seen what empowerment does to a woman when she finally knows she has power. I had been that woman. And I was not going to stop.
● MAINE — THE DREAM GROWS
I moved to the United States and built a life in Maine — but I never left the mission behind. I hold a degree in Counseling Psychology. I work as a movement teacher, a storyteller, a keynote speaker, and a cultural healer.
And I founded Wounded Healers International to raise the funds to make the bigger dream in Kenya real.
I built WHI as a volunteer-led organization because I believe that when people truly understand what is at stake, they give freely. Every dollar raised goes directly to Kenya. No overhead. No US salaries. Just the work.
● TODAY
The safe house in Kenya exists now — small, imperfect, and already changing lives. Girls are being rescued from child marriage and early pregnancy. Young mothers are going back to school. Women are learning that they are allowed to become something.
But I am not done.
The Women Village of Peace — a full healing campus in the Kikuyu community where I grew up, built for survivors, run by survivors — is what I am building next. A place where no girl has to leave her village alone in search of safety. A place that was not there for me, but will be there for the ones who come after.
I know what it costs to survive without support. I know what it looks like when one person decides to show up for another. And I know — because I have lived it — what becomes possible when a woman is given safety, education, and the chance to choose her own story.
That is why Wounded Healers International exists. That is why we will not stop.
IN HER OWN WORDS
— Nuna Gleason, Founder & Executive Director, Wounded Healers International
WHAT NUNA HAS BUILT
Founded in 2019. A survivor-led organization in Central Kenya running four programs: safe house, learning center, daycare, and community prevention.
A US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit raising funds and awareness to support Kenya and build the Women Village of Peace. Entirely volunteer-led.
A healing and consulting practice in Maine bringing trauma-informed care, yoga, mindfulness, and community healing to African immigrant women.
The dream being built — a permanent healing campus in the Kikuyu community in Kenya for survivors of sexual violence and child marriage.
Every donation funds the women and girls in Kenya — and brings the Women Village of Peace one step closer to reality.
