We believe in a world where the most vulnerable communities envision and lead their own development—through trust, shared capital, and united efforts. Unio exists to scale these visions into reality.
Investing in Local Ventures. Led by Communities. Built on Trust.
In the world's poorest regions, local entrepreneurial groups are building village ventures that create jobs, solve problems, and strengthen their communities.
Unio exists to support them.
At the heart of our work is the Community Chest—an effective tool, a community-based revolving fund that gives small local ventures the capital and trust they need to grow and thrive.
Self-propelling Shared Prosperity. Not Charity.
Unio invests in productive peoples. Communities lead the investment decisions, contribute to and co-create the solutions, and own the productive means. Our proven model combines revolving capital, business training, and essential services & product delivery with a deep commitment to local leadership, agency and dignity. It is not a traditional aid model. We don’t give handouts— It’s a system that replaces dependency of aid with agency and shared ownership. It moves away from short-term transactional relief to long-term sustainable impact.
A New Way to Global system change: Build Local Futures.
Every amount repaid and reinvested strengthens our Community Chest — fuelling more village ventures, neighbourhood markets and local value chains, nurturing wellbeing from the inside out. Together, we’re growing shared prosperity, one cycle at a time.
Scaling Together
Unio is our vehicle to scale this approach globally. We’ve already launched Community Chests in 6 countries—India, Bangladesh, The Gambia, Niger, DRC, and Colombia—across 30+ communities. Now we are ready to scale to hundreds.
Therefore, we are looking for partners, funders, businessowners and changemakers who share our communities’ visions.
Unio - Let’s Trust Communities - Together!
Explore the real-life stories of local leadership and lasting change.
Investing in Healthy living ventures
Investing in Local Value Chains
Join us in backing the local businesses who are building inclusive and sustainable futures inside out. Your support helps fund the initiatives that communities choose—and ensures that investment flows where it matters most.
Each initiative reflects a local vision & shared ownership - the core of what makes Unio’s model different. Many more communities are ready to go and invest in our local futures, with locally produced products, community-based shops, worker-owned businesses, citizens-managed public services. Do you want to contribute to flipping the system, from mass-production to production by the masses? Here are the communities ready for your co-investment!
Invest in Communities. Multiply Impact. Create Lasting Change.
At UNIO – Trusting Communities, we partner with funders to generate meaningful, long-term value. Your investment goes beyond short-term gains—it helps re-build systems rooted in dignity, resilience, and community-driven shared prosperity.
Over five years, your investment delivers exponential returns—financially, socially, structurally, and across generations.
We offer flexible, direct and sustainable impact giving models, each designed to match your philanthropic goals:
Every partnership includes personalized support, transparent reporting, and direct connection with the communities (if you like).
Philanthropist & Unio Giving Circle member
Unlocking the power of communities to shape their own future
At Unio, we believe every community has the power to shape its own future—when trusted with the right tools, resources, and opportunities.
Our mission is to expand access to capital for productive groups in underserved communities, helping them invest in what they know matters most. These are not top-down decisions: they are community-led, community-owned, and community-driven.
Through the Community Chest, we back the local associations of workers, neighbours and small businesses, who are building their own solutions from the ground up based on reciprocity and mutualism.
Investing in People. Powering Shared Prosperity
We envision a just and inclusive world where:
We are working to replace systems built on extraction, charity and dependency with ones grounded in dignity, agency, and shared prosperity.
Improving the wellbeing of 5.5 million people by 2030
How we get there:
This is local development—owned and led by the people it’s meant to serve.
Unio - Trusting Communities is an independent foundation based in the Netherlands, dedicated to advancing community-led development on a global scale.
Our work is built on long-term partnerships and guided by a governance model that values trust, collaboration, and accountability above all else. We are committed to putting communities – not institutions – at the center of development.
UNIO – Trusting Communities is co-founded by Drishtee (2003) and Kula (2018). Drishtee is an award-winning social enterprise with decades of experience working with thousands of rural villages in India, building several empowering support systems, impacting the lives of millions of peoples. Kula has piloted the community chest in six countries in the most impoverished communities. Together Kula and Drishtee built on decades of experiences and Unio draws from the deep community engagement and recognized impact of both. Their work has been acknowledged across diverse platforms and through transformative interventions, making Unio a trusted steward of community-centered development.
🔗 Learn more about our social venture plan: Download our Social venture plan
Rooted in community
Unio is governed by a diverse network of community leaders, grassroots organizations, and dedicated volunteers, all united by a shared belief in community ownership and a lasting transformation driven by the communities.
At the heart of our structure is our Supervisory Board—a group that:
This inclusive model keeps our strategic direction firmly dedicated to the communities we serve—ensuring that resources go where they’re needed most, and decisions are made with integrity and local insights.
No hierarchy - just shared purpose
At Unio, leadership isn’t about control – it’s about partnerships.
Our Board doesn’t operate from the top down. Instead, they work alongside communities, serving as embedded partners who:
“Being on the board of Unio means listening first. We don’t make decisions for communities—we help unlock what they already know they need.” Erlijn Sie Board member & co-founder
Swapna Mishra – Chair & co-founder,
Swapna is one of the co-founders and currently the General Secretary of Drishtee Foundation. She plays an instrumental role in structuring Drishtee’s various programs enabling self-sufficiency and self-reliance through community leadership. Her focus areas, as a core team member, have been community building, enterprise and innovation, women empowerment and capacity building.
Erlijn Sie - secretary & co-founder
Erlijn is co-founder of Microcredit for Mothers and Kula International. She has been leading the Banking with the Poor network, and is author of the book "Reimagining Financial Inclusion" (2021).
Rene Pieterse - treasurer
Seasoned as treasurer and fundraiser with Kula International (2018), on top of his 30 years of business (IT) consultant experience.
Unio has been granted the ANBI status (ANBI = "Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling”) by the Dutch tax authority, meaning that we’re acknowledged as a Dutch not-for-profit foundation creating benefits for the society as a whole, in May 2025.
“All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
Locally Driven. Collectively Governed.
At Unio, we don’t prescribe solutions—we invest in local leadership and community agency.
Our mutual organizational model ensures that mission, vision, and strategy emerge from the communities we serve. Through the Community Chest, we fund initiatives that are defined, led, and owned by local community groups—responding directly to their priorities and realities.
These are not charity projects. They are strategic investments that meet essential needs, create livelihoods, grow agency and assets in the community, and strengthen collective wellbeing.
A Strategy That Grows from the Ground Up
We follow an emergent strategy—a flexible, learning-driven approach that evolves directly from the communities' insights and experiences. Our Board members, partners and communities, engage in continuous participatory planning cycles where we asses, reflect and adapt. In this waywe jointly shape our path forward. This model ensures that our work remains rooted in real needs, lived realities, and continuous learning.
The Community Chest: Fuelling Local Solutions
At the centre of our approach is the Community Chest—a revolving fund and a symbol of trust. Managed directly by local community groups, these pooled resources are reinvested in ventures that respond to what matters most on the ground.
From essential services to daily needs, investments focus on:
Practical, powerful, and led from within
Unio’s role is not to direct these efforts, but to support independent, productive local community groups as they drive sustainable development and wellbeing from within. Unio co-invests with communities. The place holder for our pooled resources is the community chest. Pooled resources consist of members’ savings and social capital, plus Unio’s capital.
Please do not hesitate to contact us!
Unio Trust
Lauwerecht 96
3515 GV Utrecht
The Netherlands
+31 6 10413917
info@uniotrust.org
Tax authority number (RSIN):
867795785
Bank account:
NL39TRIO0321052846
ANBI:
867795785
We are part of the Move to Mutualism