Norel SACCO was established in 1984 by staff of Norwegian Church Aid – NCA at the time (Peter Nunda, Virginia Gitau, Philip Njoroge and Hezbon Okeke), who thought of coming up with a revolving fund that would support them undertake development initiatives to improve financial and development status of members. This was triggered by the inability to access funding in terms of loans from the agency.  Members started making their savings on a monthly basis until June 26^th 1995. The SACCO’S member deposits have grown from 836,000 in 1996 to over 16million by the end of year 2017.

It was agree agreed that the SACCO be officially registered to make it an official entity as part of the cooperative movement in Kenya.  The SACCOs vision is to be a professionally managed, financially sound and sustainable Society with an economically empowered membership and its motto remains ‘Borrow wisely and pay promptly’. The group was hosted at the Wilson Airport along Langata road where it ran its affairs. The membership was large attracting members of different nationalities (including NCA’s ecumenical partners from Sudan) until such a time that NCA operations were decentralised from Nairobi. The SACCO continues to grow and the current membership stands at 20 people from an initial 4 founder members.

The first annual general meeting was held on 25th September 1995 at NCA offices. It was chaired by officials from the Ministry of Corporative who advised that the corporative money can only be deposited at Co-operative bank. Since then, the  Kenya Union of Saving and Credit Co-operatives (KUSCO) which is  take on a representative role as the support pillar to SACCOs in Kenya was enjoined as part of the meetings. They supported the SACCO by addressing the needs, concerns and challenges facing members as well as identifying potential business opportunities that SACCO members could consider investing their accumulated funds.

The SACCO leadership continues to be selected from amongst the members and they hold the office for a period of 3 years after which they can opt out or are eligible for re-election. Despite challenges that have shaken the SACCO activities over time, there have been numerous success stories of members who have benefited from the SACCO since its establishment. The SACCO remains robust with a committed leadership and membership dedicated to its growth. The SACCO operations are founded on principles of accountability.

The SACCO has developed and endorsed its by-laws that will guide SACCO operations going forward. There is also a strategic plan in place to shape and focus its development agenda and has in the recent past developed financial and administrative manuals and a credit policy. The current SACCO products are a savings and loans product that has a saving component, a development loan and an emergency loan product. The SACCO also invests in shares from KUSCCO.