Dreams at Their Fingertips

August 12, 2019 by Jeff Gilbert

The 20-foot metal shipping containers that sit in the yard of 17 primary schools in the Rift Valley don’t carry cargo. They carry dreams.

Because these containers have been transformed into solar-powered computer classrooms, Kenyan kids can pursue a future their parents and perhaps even older siblings couldn’t imagine.

Students in schools where we provide computer education and teachers are discovering futures. They want to be pilots, doctors and teachers. They want to strengthen Kenya.

Catherine is one of those students. She is...

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A Call to Battle

July 8, 2019 by Steve Peifer

Steve Peifer, founder of Kenya Kids Can, recently visited Kenya for the first time since 2013. He shares this account of his time here.

It had been six years since we had left Kenya, and the twins were about to graduate from high school. Their high school was taking a senior trip to Iceland, and it prompted a conversation with my youngest son:

Ben: Our senior trip is to Iceland.

Me: Nice!

Ben: Dad, black people don’t go to Iceland.

Me: I didn’t know that! Where do...

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The Lucky Ones.

October 30, 2015 by Nicole Owens

Sukuma wiki is a scrappy little plant in the collard green family, and it usually looks just like this—wiry and half-combed; a mass of leaves perched on a knobby stalk. Its name means “push the week” in Swahili, as it’s a popular culinary choice when one is short on food and long on week.

Several of our KKC schools have seeded gardens with sukuma wiki, cabbage, or potatoes, and as the plants mature, the schools augment lunches with chunks of vegetables....

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Ambassadors.

June 15, 2015 by Nicole Owens

It happens at nearly every school. We step from the car with skin veneered in dust, and half the students constellate around us. The brave among them press in as close as breath to hold my hand and twist my hair through their fingers, hair that hangs in a bewildering sweep instead of wisping into proper clouds on one’s head. The shyer kiddos risk furtive glances before skittering off to giggle in the shade.

And nearly every time, at nearly every...

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Unsinkable.

January 16, 2014 by Nicole Owens

 

The whole school has turned out to see us, kicking up dust as they dance and wave us in. We climb from the car into a river of children with smiles bleached white in the three o’clock sun.

It’s Wednesday, and Todd and I have tagged along with our friend Mark to open a solar-powered computer center at a school smack dab in what Kenyans call The Interior–undeveloped land, mile upon mile of scrub brush and dirt and sheep.

I’ve never known...

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