Covid-19 Update

April 20, 2020 by Nicole Owens

This is the first time we can personally recall a health crisis gripping all of us at once. We want you to know we’re praying for you, especially those of you facing loss, or working on the front lines to bring medical care or essential service to others.

We’d also treasure your prayers for us. Here’s how the novel coronavirus is tilting reality for our KKC students.

Covid in Kenya

When Kenya confirmed its first Covid-19 case in March, the government immediately closed...

Stories About Sticks

October 28, 2019 by Jeff Gilbert

An early start

We rose before the hot African sun, gathered our gear and lunches and climbed into the old rugged 4X4. Our destination was a school in Maasai land far off the GPS grid. But we had Mark Daubenmier’s memory to guide us.

Our journey began on a paved road in the center of this farming and commercial area of Kenya’s vast Rift Valley. More than an hour later we left pavement for bumpity-bump, dirt roads into the area where...

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...

Pocket Change Changes Lives

May 31, 2019 by Mark Daubenmier

Four years ago, Kara, a friend of our ministry, got to experience the joy of kids helping kids across the world. Kara is the children’s director at a church in Ohio, and she loves seeing children engage in compassionate service to others.

Kara’s project was simple: the children collected spare change to purchase lunches for kids in Kenya. It was such a valuable experience for all of us that we wanted to share it with you, along with resources to recreate...

A Bowl With a Lid

February 28, 2019 by Mark Daubenmier

Listen to Mark’s AudioChronicle

Lunch becomes dinner.

One of the first times I was in a school with our feeding program, I noticed that a couple children weren’t eating their meal. I asked the teacher standing next to me, “Do they not like the githeri?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “They do like it. But a student will not eat their lunch if their younger brother or sister is at home and has no food to eat. Those children will save their meal and...

The Food Truck Goes Back to School

December 20, 2018 by Mark Daubenmier

January isn’t when most of us think about starting a new school year. But for kids in Kenya, it marks the start of the first trimester of the 2019 academic year.

It also marks the return of the Kenya Kids Can food truck—a food truck unlike the ones we frequent over the lunch hour here at home.

Our food truck has one item on the menu.

Githeri. It’s a blend of maize and beans simmered for four hours and served hot.

The githeri...

Let’s Keep Doing This.

November 1, 2016 by Nicole Owens

Once upon maybe five years ago, we bumped into Steve Peifer’s blog and fell headlong in love with school children in Kenya.

When I first found Steve’s site, where he shared accounts both funny and piercing about his work with Kenya Kids Can, I binge-read the posts in reverse to the very beginning. It was not unlike my Downton Abbey marathons—just one more, I’d say, and suddenly it’s 2am. (If you haven’t traveled back this far in our archives, please make...

Known.

February 26, 2016 by Nicole Owens

Some three miles down the escarpment sits the town of Maai Mahiu, a truck-stop community built from tin and painted block. The air in this place is fevered and dry, the earth itself a picture of the quality of life. Barren. Hardscrabble. Desolate and unyielding.

It’s also one of my favorite places on the planet, because it’s home to some of the small folk I love best.

On Sundays Todd and I bring a team of high school students to do street...

Category: Feeding Program