Friends of Ngong Road

We empower Nairobi children living in poverty to transform their lives through education and support, leading to employment.

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Travel Grant Announced to Volunteer in Kenya this Summer!

Friends of Ngong Road is in its twelfth operating year and for nearly a decade has held a summer camp outside of Nairobi. It is a chance for students to get out of the slums, enjoy their own beautiful country, learn about subjects not taught in traditional Kenyan schools such as sexual and reproductive health, have fun, and meet people like you!

Volunteers from the U.S. are invited to participate in camp by leading arts and crafts, discussion groups, education sessions, variety show acts, crazy games, and more! Whatever your niche or expertise is, we are likely to be able to find a place for you.

One volunteer will win a $1,000 travel grant to participate in camp! The application is due April 15. This grant is awarded to a candidate who can fully participate in the camp and be an advocate for the program when returning to the U.S.

Volunteering at camp gives you the chance to:

  • Build deep relationships with students and staff. Most who travel to Kenya say that their favorite part is meeting the people. You’ll be eating, playing, and exploring with students, staff, and other local and U.S. volunteers. There will be tons of opportunities to get to know the students and staff and develop lifelong relationships. We’re sure you’ll say “the people” as your favorite memory too!
  • Experience local customs, traditions, and culture. Food, games, songs, and more! You’ll be immersed in local culture and tradition throughout your trip.
  • See the beauty of Kenya! The camp is located in Nanyuki, Kenya. You will fly into Nairobi and travel with the other volunteers to Moi Equator Girls Secondary School in Nanyuki where camp 2018 will be held. It is a beautiful part of Kenya near Mt. Kenya!
  • Challenge yourself with an experience of a lifetime! You’ll be asked to participate by leading a session, playing games, chaperoning a field trip, engaging in normal camp routines like cleaning your dishes and keeping your bunk area tidy, and being a listening ear for students throughout camp – all needed roles at camp.

Camp 2018 Dates:

  • Post-Secondary Camp: 8/6 to 8/8
  • Leadership Camp: 8/8 to 8/11
  • Grammar Camp (10-14-year-olds): 8/11 to  8/15
  • Senior Camp (high school students): 8/16 to 8/22

It is preferred that the travel grant winner can participate in at least Leadership through Senior Camp, but if the full period is not doable with your schedule, Friend of Ngong Road is willing to have a conversation about travel dates.

Are you or someone you know interested?

You will be notified by May 1 so that you can arrange your travel plans for August!

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Tabitha

Tabitha told Friends of Ngong Road President and Founder, Paula Meyer, that she “never thought she would graduate from Form 4.” She knew it was not affordable on her family’s little income. Fortunately, she managed to accomplish that!

Jamie and Nancy Letcher have been sponsoring Tabitha since she joined the program . She and her mother were living with two of her aunts while struggling to make it in the slums of Nairobi. Her mother occasionally washed clothes for other families and sold odds and ends to get enough income for one meal a day.

Tabitha excelled in her primary school environment often performing at the top of her class. With her high eighth-grade exam score, led to Nairobi’s Ngara Girls Secondary School acceptance . Despite coming from an extreme poverty background, she performed well and made friends with students from diverse backgrounds. Tabitha scored good results on her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exam. She dreams of becoming a forensic scientist and will be applying to university in the fall.

Tabitha became the youth peer provider for the new sexual and reproductive health program before joining university. Fourteen students were trained through Planned Parenthood Global and eight selected to lead the training for their peers. While applying to post-secondary schools, she has attended our computer training course and Life Skills program led by Megan and Evan Feige of Minneapolis, MN. The program will expand later this year with a Rotary Global Grant with the South Metro Minneapolis Evenings Rotary club and the Kikuyu Rotary Club of Nairobi. She is a respected leader among her peers and an inspiration to her two younger brothers.

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Save the Date: 2018 Annual Gathering at Surly

It’s not too early to save the date for this year’s Annual Gathering to be held at Surly Brewing Company from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. Hear stories of students transforming their own lives through education, meet a special guest from Kenya, purchase beautiful handmade items from Kenya and enjoy a Surly beer. All are welcome!

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Letter from Nairobi

Dear Friends of Ngong Road,

We would like to extend our appreciation to our sponsors, donors, volunteers, and well-wishers for their great support in 2017. The year ended well and we are glad to report that we have started 2018 on a high note. However, while every day is becoming better and better at NRCF (Ngong Road Children’s Foundation), we have a significant and growing need for sponsors. Currently, we have a list of over 200 children that are waiting to be sponsored. It breaks our hearts when needy parents and guardians come to our office every day asking whether their child has been successful in getting a sponsor yet.

My Personal Experience

I was brought up in a family where my Dad was a firm believer in education. His philosophy of life was, “Instead of giving my children the fish to eat, I want to empower them to learn how to fish themselves”. He was a crusader for education for all, especially for girls, so he sent us all to school. In my rural community, most families did not educate girls because they believed that the girls would get married and any investment made in their education would benefit the marital family, not the parental family.

My Dad supported the education of many children (both relatives and non-relatives) and from an early age instilled in us the virtue of helping others. This involved sharing our home to accommodate the needy and even sharing our parents with the many children who referred to them as Dad and Mum for the support they received. From the lessons I learned from my Dad, I currently support the education of five children (both relatives and non-relatives) from my hometown in Malava, Kakamega County. They are at different levels of school ranging from university, middle-level colleges, high schools, and primary schools.

Typical African Philosophy

In Africa, the extended family benefits from the affluence of their kinsmen. One African proverb summarizes this: “Shorter trees in a forest climb on taller ones in order to survive”. Among the groups who benefit are the sick, the poor, the disabled, women, and children. For a long time, Africans have shouldered problems afflicting their parents, siblings, friends, relatives, and even neighbors. This included bringing them up. The better off provided food, shelter, clothes, education, medical care, and a supportive community. Providing such support is a common practice for most Kenyans.

The Kenyan Rural vs Urban Divide

However, the situation in urban centers is different. Many urban Kenyans already support family members so it is difficult for them to support needy children in the city who may have lost their entire families. For the few local Kenyans who do provide support to city children, they cannot commit for long, because they may have other responsibilities like family members or elderly parents in the village who are depending on them for their livelihood.

Most families of our sponsored children left their rural areas with the hope of finding greener pastures in the city. Most of them find themselves scratching out an existence in slums. High rates of poverty and unemployment usually characterize slums.

Many commonly view them as breeding grounds for social problems like crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, a high prevalence of mental illness, and suicide. Slum dwellers also exhibit a high incidence of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care.

Why do we continue to need overseas sponsors?

Most of our children at NRCF reside in this kind of environment. They do not have economically stable relatives who can support them. Their parents or guardians work in casual manual jobs that pay a dollar or less a day. With the little money they have, most of them prioritize providing a single meal daily for the family over education for their children. Despite subsidized education, additional costs like books, uniforms, and transport lead impoverished children to abandon school in Kenya.

With the unstable political environment in Kenya during the last six months, the economy is not doing well. The burden is on the taxpayer who has also to overcome the rising cost of living to survive. Typically, available funds after meeting existing responsibilities towards the extended family are even lower than before.

As part of the NRCF family, we want to make the world a better place than we found it by touching the souls of those who are disadvantaged by fate. By doing so, their lives can be transformed. In return, they may touch other souls when they succeed in life. We, therefore, appeal to potential sponsors to join our NRCF family to assist these deserving cases. Giving is not because someone has excess wealth but rather because of the heart of giving.

I extend heartfelt thanks to NRCF program’s sponsors, donors, volunteers, and stakeholders for their unwavering dedication and selflessness.

Maureen Mulievi
Programme Director
Ngong Road Children’s Foundation

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Karibu Loo off to a strong start in 2018

Karibu Loo is off to a very strong start in 2018, largely due to several significant long-term rentals. Here are the highlights:

Long-term rentals. The portable sanitation business in the U.S. is primarily based on long-term rentals. It is virtually impossible to build a successful portable sanitation business by only supplying to events, however, events have constituted most of our business to date in Kenya. Long-term rentals are an essential ingredient to profits as they ensure a steady stream of revenue to cover costs.

In January, Karibu Loo rented out 66 units for about 15 days to a unit of the British Army that is training the Kenyan Army and another 10 units to a Chinese construction firm for the entire month. Both of these clients are candidates for long-term contracts. In addition, we have weekend long-term rentals at several churches. Together, these long-term contracts plus normal event business generated just over $2,000 of profit in January.

Employment. Five of our graduates are employed by Karibu Loo in marketing (1), operations (3), and accounting (1). In addition, we employ many recent high school graduates as “sales and operations associates” whose responsibilities include keeping the loos clean and well-supplied at events around Nairobi. This is a good way to provide income for these students and teach them basic workplace etiquette – showing up on time, dressing appropriately, speaking confidently with clients, and following through on responsibilities.

Issues. The biggest challenge faced by the business today is that our only truck has become very unreliable. The truck has served us well for the past several years but is increasingly prone to breakdowns. We have had to outsource the movement of loos and cleaning services when the truck was not functional which cuts into our margins. We are building a new trailer that will be pulled by our pickup truck and can carry six loos.

A second challenge faced by the business is receivables. Despite efforts, reducing receivables remains a challenge as timely customer payments prove recurrently problematic in Kenya.

Growing the business. We are considering ordering more cabins and an additional exhauster. We have had many days in January and February when the constraint on business volume was a lack of available cabins and the logistics of having only one exhauster and truck has become too risky. Meanwhile, we are raising funds to replace the old truck immediately.