Asante Sana

The staff at Free The Children get their hands dirty in Kenya

Less than one week ago, almost 60 of our Free The Children team members were visiting our development projects in the Maasai Mara region of Kenya. After 10 days in Kenya, the team has returned even more equipped to support you while you create positive change around the world. We are so grateful to have had this opportunity, and want to let you know a little bit about what we did, saw and learnt while we were there.

After leaving Nairobi and heading to the Maasai Mara region, we got a chance to hang out with the amazing in-country Free The Children staff, including Peter, our Africa projects director, and Michelle, our Africa health project manager. We also took a lesson in Swahili, the local language.

Along with meeting Free The Children staff in Kenya, we also got to hang out with different community members and learn about their daily lives. I know that a highlight for many of us was going on a community walk with local women in Salabwek, visiting their homes and helping them to carry water for the Mara river back to the school. After that we ate lunch with a couple of the Mamas and talked to them about gender roles in their community and how Free The Children’s development work is helping them.

Along with Salabwek, Free The Children is currently working in nine other communities in Kenya. Since 2002, 68 schools have been built. We have built 10 rainwater catchment systems, 44 latrines and 15 hand-washing stations at the schools. We’ve also been working with women’s groups to help them come up with ways to generate alternative sources of income for themselves and their families. We provide them with small loans that can be used for a variety of different activities. These have ranged from breeding and milking goats to sell in the market, to honey production, to building latrines in homes. Workshops are also run on things such as sanitation; women’s, children’s and human rights; financial literacy; and skill-building.

We were also fortunate enough to have the staff members from China and Ecuador on this trip to hear them share the unique experiences they have had in the countries they’re working in. All of this information will give us a more in-depth understanding of our development projects, and we promise to report back to our most important stakeholders: you!

The success of these projects in Kenya and all of the other countries we work in is because of the hard work of Youth in Action Groups in North America and around the world. We are so happy to have seen the products of all of your hard work and we can’t wait to share the stories of gratitude and joy from the men, women and children of Kenya.

As they say in Swahili: Asante Sana! Thank you!

Free The Children is the largest network of children helping children through education in the world, with more than one million youth involved in our innovative education and development programs in 45 countries. Founded by international child rights activist Craig Kielburger, Free The Children has an established track-record of success, with three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and partnerships with the United Nations and Oprah’s Angel Network.