By Turner Cobden
Friends of Ngong Road Board Member

I’m glad to report that we have had another fantastic year of camp in Kenya, offering the opportunity for both staff and students to enjoy getting away from Nairobi for just a little while.  I joined Ngong Road Children’s Foundation staff members Kelvin Thuku, Antony Kamau, and Mary Muriu as co-director for both our senior and leadership camps.  The camp was held at the St. Francis Xavier School near Lake Naivasha, famous for its wildlife and scenic beauty.

The students had fun and that is one of our core requirements for the camp to be a success.  In addition to just having fun, the children also had a chance to see the surrounding area and, during senior camp, go to Hell’s Gate National Park on a field trip.

As we finish our 10th year of camp, it’s worthwhile to reflect and think about how this portion of the charity has evolved over the years.  Our original camp, run by Tom Gleason in 2007, had some very basic goals: food, structure, and enrichment.  The camp was held in Nairobi and had all children in the program participate (only 150 back then!) during the daytime.  At the end of the day, the children would go home and come back again in the morning.  The camp was also significantly shorter, with the entire program finishing in just one week.

The camp became an anchor for these children in some ways.  As I continued to come back in subsequent years, I would hear stories about how for the first six months after camp the children would talk about how they enjoyed the previous camp.  The next six months were filled with thoughts about how much they looked forward to it.  That is a powerful testament to the work that our volunteers, staff, and directors do.

The camp program evolved and expanded over the years, realizing its value to these children’s experiences. Camp organizers began segmenting the camp by age bracket to offer more age-friendly activities.

For instance, the older children in the program could start receiving additional enrichment and life skills, taught by our volunteer staff. We conducted experiments with field trips and then actively relocated the entire camp to different regions to expose the children to various areas.

We have now grown to multiple camps: Little Kids Camp, Grammar Camp, Senior Camp, and our most ambitious, Leadership Camp.  For the past few years, Leadership Camp has created an opportunity for our older students to apply and actually be part of the staff for camp.  They train using a servant leadership model, focusing on enabling their teams and squads to succeed together. Camp doesn’t harbor any heroes; success thrives on teamwork.

For the second year in a row, Sally Kenney delighted us by joining us at camp. As a sponsor of three children and Executive Director of the Newcomb College Institute at Tulane University, she is uniquely qualified to empower our leadership campers and take them to new heights.

Sally also implemented a partnership of Friends of Ngong Road with Tulane University. This year and we saw our first three students from Tulane earning course credit for joining us at camp!  It was a fantastic first and a stellar way to continue growing camp after ten successful years.

Thank you so much to everyone that allowed camp to again be another wonderful time for the kids.  From personal experience, I can admit the staff had some fun, too!