Our mission is to provide vulnerable communities, especially children, with a safe space to heal and therefore prosper.
Inspired by a grandmother’s love
nisria, our founder’s late grandmother, lived an inspiring life. nisria demonstrated how to show true compassion and love to others, whenever and wherever — and now we show up to do this in her honor every day.
Our beginnings
Founder Nur M'nasria, an accomplished TV and film producer, first visited the slums of Kenya in 2015 to film an episode about the area. At a children’s home within one of the slums, the group met kids who would see themselves on a screen for the first time. Another first was to see someone with a lighter skin color, evidenced by their scratching at Nur’s skin with tiny fingers to check if there was another layer of skin with a different color.
“At that moment I knew I had to come back soon, so I did.”
— Founder Nur M’nasria
Nur returned to Kenya in January 2016 with an initial mission to set up playgrounds and distribute toys. That’s when Play For Smiles came to life. Over the years, the mission expanded and we officially began conducting work as Nsria in 2019.