The Nachan Project
The Nachan Project is a registered 501(c)3 non profit in the United States and a registered International NGO in Uganda.
From Survive to Thrive
Our team is one of a kind
Gina de la Chesnaye
Founder, Director
USA
Gina de la Chesnaye is a yoga, meditation and Qi Gong teacher, competitive kickboxer, writer, photographer, and humanitarian. Gina has an MPH in Global Public Health from New York University and an MFA in Photography from Hunter College. She is the Mindfulness Course Director for the Surgical PA Residency Program at Norwalk Hospital.
For 20 years she has practiced and taught contemplative-based mind-body practices for trauma recovery and resiliency to trauma survivors, clinicians, humanitarian aid workers and caregivers.
She is an alumna of the 2016 Harvard Program for Refugee Trauma and Recovery Certificate Program and is on the faculty of numerous organizations including The Lineage Project, The International Center for Mental Health and Human Rights, Second Response and others offering practice and trainings in New York City, East Africa and Nepal.
Allan Reigns
Field Supervisor, Social Worker
Uganda
TUMWESIGYE ALLAN REIGNS is the founder and social worker at Alpha Female Empowerment Initiative, an organization that works with homeless teenage mothers and children on streets and slums of Kampala and poor communities in Uganda, through rehabilitation programs, family Reunification programs, small scale income generating activities, and vocational skills training and education through sponsorship programs. This empowers the young women to become resilient to be able to support themselves and send their children to school.
Allan is the field supervisor and lead social worker for NACHAN Uganda which serves the women and children of katwe slums which helps them through trauma informed resiliency training and humanitarian aid. He facilitates trainings that helps the community regulate and manage their traumatic experience hence they can be able realize their potentials and abilities and take care of themselves and children
Allan is also a Sexual Reproductive Health Counselor at the Makerere University Hospital, which offers medical services and research to the University community and out patient in general medical and health services. He is the Chairman of the CRANE Network a body that brings together all the organizations that works with street connected children and homeless people in slums and surrounding communities, thus the network that brings together over 40 non government organizations which watch over and supports collective organizations efforts towards helping on the increasing problem of street children or street connected children in central Uganda.
In addition he is a junior lecturer at YMCA Comprehensive Institute in Kampala where he teaches Psychology and HIV/ART Counseling to Guidance and counseling
students at the institution.
He is a board member of the KCCA OVC’s Actors group, a local government arm that oversees the works of non-governmental organizations that work with street connected children and vulnerable persons within Kampala City.
Allan holds a Bachelor's Degree in Social Work and Administration, Diploma in Sexual and Reproductive Health Counseling, Diploma In Guidance and Counseling and lives in Kampala Uganda with his family.
Baliko Martin Stuart
Street Counselor
Uganda
Baliko Martin Stuart also known as Matt B is a Ugandan singer, poet, rapper, actor, film producer, book Co- author, song and movie writer, journalist, businessman, street children ambassador former boxer and an ex-street boy. He currently serves as a director of Amari Uganda a project founded in 2011, managing director of Lens Code Media Company and also a member of Nachan Project.
He’s a Film producer with his first movie known as Cross roads, street children advocate in Kampala, co-author and producer of a Street boy book which is about the life experience of him as a street boy. He works as a media personnel and producer in Nachan project for Vulnerable women in slums, he works as a program advisor for Forum for Acid victims and his also an entrepreneur through his own film company called Lens code Media.
Susan Kemigisha
Counselor
Uganda
Susan Kemigisha is a counselor at The Nachan Project and Alpha Female Empowerment Initiative. She works directly with the homeless teenage mothers and children on the streets and slums of Kampala as well as with the poor communities in Uganda through offering vocational skills training, education through sponsorship programs, psychological and spiritual counseling and rehabilitation programs.
Susan also provides mindfulness training including yoga and strength conditioning as well as civic engagement activities with the women of the Nachan Project.
She also serves as a counselor at Baylor College of Medicine at Mulago which offers counseling and testing services to HIV/AIDS clients and also does APN (Assisted Pattern Network) services.
Susan has a Bachelor's Degree in Counseling from Bishop Stuart University and is currently pursuing a Master's in Counseling Psychology at Ndeje University in Kampala.
Brenda Ayugi
Mindfulness Trainer
Uganda
Brenda Ayugi aka Black Empress is a mindfulness trainer at NACHAN. She is also a reggae dancehall Afrofuse singer and guitarist born and raised on the streets of Kampala. Black Empress' songs are focused on human rights activism.
She has skills in shoe making and hand carved craft making which she is teaching the women of Nachan so that they can be more self reliant.
Lulu Pajor
Remote Operations Coordinator
USA
Lulu Pajor is a licensed massage therapist in Upstate, NY, a Psychology Major at SUNY New Paltz and a mental health advocate. Lulu also serves as a Meditation guide and devoted yoga practitioner. She has a passion for helping people feel more at ease in their mind, body, and heart. Her journey into studying functional anatomy and somatic movement modalities started when she needed to learn how to heal herself.
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