About Athari
We help organizations see more clearly what their work has set in motion.
Strong work can generate more evidence than an organization realizes. The challenge is often not a lack of information. It is having the space and perspective to step back, see how the evidence connects, understand what it can support, and communicate it clearly.
Athari exists to help close that gap.
Why Athari exists
A pattern that kept showing up
Athari exists because of a pattern that showed up again and again: organizations doing extraordinary work, and evidence of that work that never became a story anyone outside the organization could act on.
We work with organizations to recognize the evidence within their work, make sense of what it shows, and turn it into clearer action and credible communication.
Impact does not always follow a neat, linear path.
Change can move through families, communities, networks, and economic structures, creating effects that are connected to the original work but not always captured by conventional measurement. That does not mean claiming everything that might have happened. It means looking carefully at what the evidence can support, understanding it in context, and communicating it without overstating the story.
What distinguishes our approach
We look where the work actually happens.
We look for evidence where the work actually happens, not only in formal program data, but in meeting records, participant experience, communications, and relationships.
We don't treat more evidence as automatically better evidence. We look at what exists, what it can support, and what should happen next.
See how, in detailWhat we believe
Evidence should help people understand, not simply report.
A report can contain plenty of information and still leave the reader unclear about what actually happened. We believe the purpose of evidence work is to create understanding, so people can make better decisions and communicate with greater confidence.
Context matters.
Evidence does not exist in isolation. The context in which work happens shapes what changes, how change travels, and what can reasonably be connected to an intervention.
Clarity is a form of rigor.
A bigger story is not necessarily a stronger story. We care about making claims that are proportionate to the evidence behind them, and about communicating those claims in language people can actually use.
The goal is not to create the biggest story. It is to create the clearest story the evidence can support.
What we hold ourselves to
Commitment.
Good evidence work is collaborative. We need clients to engage with the process, surface what they know, and make decisions alongside us.
Clarity.
We are deliberate about what we ask for, why it matters, and what the evidence can and cannot tell us.
Evidence discipline.
We distinguish between what the evidence directly shows, what it suggests, and what can reasonably be inferred from it. We do not fill gaps with certainty.
Context.
We take the environments in which organizations work seriously. Evidence should be understood in context, not forced into a shape simply because a framework expects it.
Who is behind Athari
Athari was founded by Kate Onsati, based in Nairobi.
Early in her career working across the African development and business landscape, a pattern kept emerging. The work was extraordinary: women rebuilding livelihoods, artisans threading themselves into global supply chains, farmers organizing cooperatives that were quietly rewriting the economics of entire communities.
But what was being reported bore little resemblance to what was actually happening. Organizations had evidence. What they were missing was the full picture of what their work had set in motion, and the language to communicate it in a way that moved the people who needed to act. The frameworks available were not designed for this reality: built for linear causality, for contained interventions, for contexts where economic activity flows through formal channels. That is not how impact moves across the communities Athari works with.
That gap is why she started Athari.
Athari brings that founding insight together with a growing practice focused on evidence, impact understanding, and communication for NGOs, social enterprises, corporates, and networks across Africa.
The ripple, still moving.