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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Archives for December 2018

December 31, 2018 By Lacey Kraft Leave a Comment

IRA Charitable Contribution

Are you over 70 ½? Consider using your individual retirement account (IRA) to make a gift to Friends of Ngong Road. The Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) provision allows individuals of at least 70 ½ years of age to distribute funds from an individual retirement account (IRA) to a qualifying charity without the transfer qualifying as income.

Several of our donors have used this provision to contribute to Friends of Ngong Road in a tax-advantaged way. Consult your financial advisor or the financial institution that holds your IRA to learn if this is appropriate for you and to find out what special processing is required to make a QCD.

December 28, 2018 By Mary Wanjiru Leave a Comment

SRH Program Update

In December 2017 we launched a Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Program with the generosity of several U.S. donors and support of Tulane University. SRH is based on a youth peer provider model created by Tulane University as the best practice for our students.

Planned Parenthood Global trained fourteen students to become Youth Peer Providers of the SRH Program. After the training, 8 students were selected to conduct peer training (two-year commitment) due to their mastery of the materials and effective communications skills. Since December 2017, the Youth Peer Providers have trained approximately 70% of the students in seventh grade through post-secondary school. The remaining students are to receive training in December 2018, April 2019 and/or August 2019.

Excellent Preliminary Results
In its first year, the most positive outcome of the SRH program is that only one young woman became pregnant in the past year compared to seven in the previous year. Fortunately, she was close enough to her post-secondary graduation that it did not derail her education. While this is just one year’s data, we’re hopeful that we’re on the right track by providing facts and resources in an effective manner.

Continued Tulane University Support
We have continued to receive support from Tulane University for the program. Last summer, a Tulane student spent the summer in Nairobi evaluating the program under the supervision of Dr. Patty Kissinger, a professor and researcher at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She made several important recommendations, such as:

  • Helping students become more likely to access medical care by scheduling tours of the partnered clinic and bringing healthcare professionals from the clinic to the training sessions.
  • Making the educational material available to students online.
  • Providing more training for Youth Peer Providers on SRH topics and skills such as presenting and handling difficult conversations.
  • Educating parents and guardians on the importance of the training to create further buy-in from the Kenyan community.

Going forward, we will be implementing Tulane’s recommendations, doing a refresher training in January 2019 with the Youth Peer Providers, recruiting future Youth Peer Providers, and training the remaining 30% of students who did not receive training in year one.

Pioneering Sex Education
Sex education in Kenya lacks consistency, and we need to dispel numerous misconceptions. For instance, people wrongly believe that condoms cause cancer or that using contraception will permanently prevent women from conceiving a baby. Having access to factual information about their bodies and access to contraception is something our students in Kenya need to stop the cycle of early pregnancy.

We are excited about the results of the first year and believe it to be critical for all students’ success in the future. If you are interested in helping to fund this program in 2019 and beyond, please contact Lacey Kraft at lacey@ngongroad.org or 612-568-4211.

December 12, 2018 By Lacey Kraft Leave a Comment

Help us meet the match by December 31

This holiday season, we give thanks to the 93 percent of our post-secondary graduates who have secured a job or internship following graduation. Here are photos and job titles of some students who are starting to transform their lives. They graduated from our post-secondary program and have since gained experience in a job or internship.


We are so proud of these students! But there is more work to do. Just over $40,000 of our $65,000 Ted and Kathy Truscott Annual Appeal Match has been met. Help us meet our match so we can continue providing this exceptional program for students.

George, a program graduate and now a caseworker for the program say he “sees peers from his childhood in the slums without work. Many are wrapped up in drugs or have unplanned pregnancies at a young age.” But George has a job and a bright future. Your support has meant the world to him.

Help us meet the Annual Appeal Match today
by donating at www.ngongroad.org/donate or by sending a check to P.O. Box 581308, Minneapolis, MN 55458. Donating your gift in honor of a loved one can make for a meaningful holiday gift.

If you have already given to the Annual Appeal Match, we thank you! Together we can keep making a difference for kids in Kenya.

Happy holidays to you and yours,

Lacey Signature

Lacey Kraft
Development Director

December 10, 2018 By Mary Wanjiru 2 Comments

2018 KCPE Results

Fantastic Grade 8 Exam Results Received
The end of the calendar year is also the end of the school year for our students in Kenya. For those completing eighth grade, this can be an especially taxing time as they take their KCPE (Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education) exams. These exams take a number of days to complete and involve comprehensive testing of all their primary education studies. KCPE results determine what type of high school the student will be accepted into. The maximum score a student can achieve is 500 points, They are tested on the subjects of English, Swahili, Math, Science, and Social/Religious Studies – each subject being worth 100 points to make the 500 point total.

John

Broke the 400 Point Ceiling!
This year, one of our students, John Githui, has set a new NRCF record by scoring 409 points! This is compared to the best score in the entire country of 453. Only about 1% of students in Kenya score above 400 on the KCPE. Some of our other top-scoring students include Levy Otieno, Boaz Marube, Peter Leon, Latifah Njeri, and Angela Arina. Only two of our students who took the exam this year scored below the national average of 251, with more than 65% of our students scoring between 300-400 points. Our students accomplished an average score of 313.

A Great Accomplishment
We are immensely proud of these students, their caseworkers, and their sponsors for helping them to achieve such high marks. These scores will result in the students being accepted to more prestigious high schools, therefore paving the way for their post-secondary and life-long success. We are looking forward to future years of high KCPE scores and to seeing what these students are able to achieve!

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Friends of Ngong Road
100 1st St S #581308
Minneapolis, MN 55458
(612) 568-4211 | info@ngongroad.org

EIN: 20-4690846

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