These past 11 months

February 18, 2021 by Nicole Owens

Dear friends of Kenya Kids Can,

The fascinating and terrible thing about a pandemic is how it leaves no place untouched. Even the isolated swaths of the valley floor, where many of our KKC students live, have felt the reverberations of illness, school closures, a contracting economy.

Here’s what the past 11 months have looked like for our students:

March

Kenya confirms its second Covid-19 case, prompting the government to close schools.

April

With the help of area chiefs, Lucy and our teachers distribute our remaining stores of maize and...

The weight of relief

May 28, 2020 by Nicole Owens

These strange days

Under normal, non-pandemic circumstances, our KKC teachers arrive at school each day to teach back-to-back computer classes, their students clustered in twos and threes around illumined screens. Across the yard, cooks pick through beans and maize to fish out errant twigs. They fan oxygen onto cooking fires, and spend the morning angled over vats of simmering githeri. As the sun crests past noon, a head teacher clangs a makeshift lunch bell, and children swarm the outdoor kitchen armed...

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...

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...

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...

Stories from the Field

Stories
from the Field