In 2019, Betteke de Gaay Fortman founded the Impaction Foundation. Prior to this, she had been actively involved with Karuna Foundation for over 12 years. Karuna is an organisation in Nepal, with the mission to improve the lives of children with disabilities. Karuna Foundation Nepal developed a replicable and practical approach from scratch that improves the quality of life of children with a disability and their families and prevents avoidable birth defects by strengthening the existing health, education and social system of Nepal.
The idea for the Impaction Foundation started with a meeting that took place at the end of 2018. Betteke was contacted by Gilbert Mututsi Ruturutsa, the director of ADED (Appui au Développement de l'Enfant en Détresse): a local organisation active for vulnerable children in the Eastern part of Congo. Gilbert was looking for a method to support children with a disability and their families, and found Karuna's work online. He reached out to Betteke, who encouraged him to visit Karuna in Nepal. And so he did. When he got back to Congo, Gilbert told Betteke that the visit of ten days taught him enough to be able to continue and move forward in Congo for the coming 10 years.
"After ten days in Nepal, I can move forward for 10 years in my country" - Gilbert Mututsi Ruturutsa
Gilbert's statement gave rise to the idea of establishing Impaction Foundation to support his vision and make the lessons learned and successful approach accessible beyond Nepal. It led to the birth of Impaction Foundation in 2019 with the mission to support local organisations in different countries in the Global South with increasing the self-reliance of extremely vulnerable groups.
Impaction started to support ADED - and some years later AJEPAD - in Eastern Congo in implementing the Tunafasi program. The Tunafasi program contextualizes the Karuna Nepal approach, which makes it possible to reach many more children and youth with a disability in getting sustainable access to health, education, income and social participation. ADED started with a small pilot in Uvira, and it took off quickly. The program is now being scaled up to more locations in Eastern Congo.
Seven years went by, full of lessons learned, failures, successes and fine tunings. The Tunafasi approach took more and more shape and touched many lives in Eastern Congo in a sustainable way (and continues to do so today). At the same time, Impaction in the Netherlands grew stronger too.
The way Impaction worked together with ADED and AJEPAD turned out to be not only about a strong, evidence-based approach, but also a way of working together in a trust-based manner. It became a way of doing and being. The program started attracting more funders, implementers, new climate-related indigenously-led organisations in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as young professionals in the Netherlands. All this combined asked for a stronger brand and a clear bigger vision.
The time came to turn the desired changes into reality and in May 2026, Impaction Foundation was transitioned into a new foundation called 'Stichting TUNAFASI'. TUNAFASI is Swahili for 'we all have a place; a place where we belong' and perfectly brings together TUNAFASI's mission, vision and core values in one sentence. We stand for inclusion, the power of community and locally-led systemic change, human resilience, trust-based collaboration and sustainable support that lasts.
Dandelion: a symbol of our believe in growing smaller
Growth happens when TUNAFASI lets go. Small, grassroots actions ripple outward, creating lasting impact through trust, collaboration, leadership and ownership.
That is why TUNAFASI's role is intentionally small: demand-driven, time-limited, and light in footprint. A small spark to catalyse, and then let go. Because sustainable impact takes root when initiatives are locally-led and owned.
Our brandmark captures this: a dandelion formed from repeating "T"s, standing for trust, resilience and potential. Each seed represents a spark of change, carried by grassroots connections and spreading into a wider movement. Soft and open, grounded in local roots, and always moving outward.
TUNAFASI itself stays small by design, because the goal is never to grow the organisation, but to grow the movement of reaching more impact.
