Our Kenya Partnership celebrated 20 years of friendship, faith and hope this past year. Over these years we have prayed together for each other, and in the recent years for peace with their neighboring tribe.
Insecurity and drought devastated much of the valley the past few years. Cattle rustling and killings escalated. Government officials finally took extreme measures and peace again became reality this summer. We are so grateful and relieved. It is one thing to read about insecurity in other nations on the news but quite another to have dear friends attending funerals weekly and living in fear daily.
We also celebrate our students and sponsoring families who have made our student sponsorship program a huge success. We began supporting the school fees for secondary students in 2012. That year 32 families supported 17 secondary students and 5 college students. In 2019, 84 families supported 70 secondary students and 7 college students in Kenya! Truly amazing and significant! The gift of education for these students is life changing – not only for them but also for their families and villages.
A six-person coordinating team in Kenya oversees the selection process and a social worker was hired to monitor student progress, coordinate student gatherings three times a year and visit students at their schools. In August 2019 the first Career Day was held with 56 of our students in attendance.
Recently our teams decided to focus on secondary school student support for future years. Kenya is implementing a new system of education and that along with logistics of different college systems as well as ‘focusing on what we do well,’ we will be phasing out the support of higher education.
We continue to need more sponsors as the list of students hoping to attend secondary school is unending. Any donation is significant and appreciated as our supplemental fund helps those students whose parents can pay for most but not all their tuition.
Thank you for your continued support and prayers.
Deb Burich and the Kenya Partnership team
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