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WHO WE SERVE

    Through our partner, Kenya Rising, we support 175 families or 1,000 people through our Family Care programs. We also have over 170 high school students and 40 post-secondary students who attend classes with support from our scholarship programs.

    The families and students we assist come from many villages within a one-hour drive of Kakamega Town in western Kenya, from Hamisi in the south to Kambi ya Mwanza in the north.

    All of the families and students in our programs are supported based on extreme need. They are nominated by our regional coordinators, women and men who live in the communities we serve and know which families are in greatest need. Our beneficiaries are visited at home by social workers, and screened for acceptance into our programs based on criteria including income poverty and social vulnerabilities such as death of parent(s) and breadwinners, medical conditions like HIV, and physical disability.

    We have some students under scholarship who were accepted because they are both needy and high performing in school. At the same time, the majority of people receiving assistance from us are supported based purely on need alone. We are unique in western Kenya as one of the only organizations offering scholarships and family assistance based purely on need, whereas a number of other charities offer scholarships to needy students based on high academic achievement. We believe that everyone deserves a chance at a better life, not just those born with outstanding natural intellect.

    75% of the families we support are women-only headed households, around 10% are men-only headed households, and 15% are households headed by a couple (typically grandparents caring for their orphaned grandchildren).

    The people we support live in densely populated rural areas outside the rapidly-growing Kakamega town. Nearly all of them are famers, mostly subsistence farmers at the time we began assisting them. Most of these families have very small plots of land that range from ⅛ of an acre to 1 acre.


    Copyright 2021 for Friends of Kenya Rising by Sedona Graphic Design
    3 Echo Lane North, Sherman CT 06784 • info@friendsofkenyarising.org • (802) 490-0522