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...

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....

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...

Shine.

August 18, 2014 by Nicole Owens

It was a side trip tacked to the tail of a long, blistering day. We’d been out visiting KKC schools, and I’m sure we looked a fright, sporting grime and sunburn, our hair blown tumbleweed-stiff.

But still the good folks at Oiti Primary welcomed us like dear friends. They’d been writing for months with a candid plea: Please include us in your feeding program. When we finally made it out to their school, they pumped our hands with gusto, radiating nervous...

Category: Feeding Program