Acknowledgement Archives - Friends of Ngong Road

Improving the donation experience

Our US team has been hard at work rebuilding the system we use to track your donations. When Friends of Ngong Road was founded 16 years ago, most of our supporters mailed checks to our founding board members, and then to our PO Box. Eventually, we were able to start accepting sponsorship donations through automatic credit card withdrawals, but each donation was still manually tracked, responded to, and managed by our team. This led to a huge amount of time spent by our US staff doing simple data entry, and occasionally, making mistakes as humans tend to do. Over the years as we have grown and added more students, created a more robust program, and as inflation and other costs have increased, the amount of time our staff has spent manually typing your donations into our system has increased.

We realized that this model was no longer sustainable, and our US team went to work to build a system that would support automated donation tracking. There were 16 years of donations to comb through, sort, and organize, then we rebuilt our existing system to support automation, and finally, in the past few weeks, we have been able to launch the newly built automation to our website. You likely won’t notice a difference quite yet (there are big improvements coming your way soon!) in the way you make donations on our website, but behind the scenes your donations now flow directly into our system, allowing our US staff to use their time in more meaningful and impactful ways.

In the next year, we are hoping to bring an account management system to donors through the sponsor portal where sponsors can log in to manage their sponsorships, change credit card information, add additional sponsorships, etc. These types of improvements would not be possible without all the work that has been completed over the past year. As technology continues to improve and become more accessible, and as we as an organization continue to grow and serve more students, we are grateful to have a board that understands the power of technology and is willing to support new ventures to ultimately support the efficiency of the teams both in the US and in Kenya

Notes from Paula – March 2020

Dear friends,

Greetings from a world that has changed. We are all coping as we work to understand what COVID-19 will mean for people across the globe and what the downstream economic harm is likely to be. Like most people, I don’t yet understand the long-term implications however I have already deeply internalized an important lesson: We are all in this together! Viruses do not respect borders, income levels or political preferences. We all have to pull together to overcome this threat.

In that spirit, Friends of Ngong Road board members Amy Johnson, Keith Kale and I have been working long days for the past ten days to establish a Crisis Management process for Ngong Road Children’s Foundation (NRCF) and Karibu Loo (KLL) in Kenya and for Friends of Ngong Road (FoNR) in the United States. Teams meet daily in Kenya while the U.S. and global teams confer weekly. We have taken steps to reduce expenses in both organizations with a goal of weathering this storm.

There are several important staff changes you should know about…

Lacey Kraft joined Friends of Ngong Road as our first full-time paid employee in February 2016. Her assignment was to build upon the work volunteers did during Friends of Ngong Road’s first ten years and formalize the organization’s development program. Lacey tackled this assignment with great energy and made significant contributions during her four years with the organization. Sadly, she has decided to leave for another non-profit in the Twin Cities. We are sorry to see Lacey go and wish her all the best in the future.
We have made the difficult decision to eliminate the position of Program Director spanning both NRCF and KLL in Kenya. Maureen Mulievi is the current incumbent in that role and has served the organization well. We are sorry to say goodbye to Maureen and wish her the best in her future endeavors. In this environment, we believe the organization must streamline leadership so we are as effective and efficient as possible.
Kelvin Thuku will assume leadership of NRCF while Emmanuel Mukasa (business development) and Steve Muendo (operations) will co-lead Karibu Loo through the crisis.

In all cases, Kenyan staff members will report to Crisis Management teams comprised of people in both countries.

In Kenya, the immediate and significant need is for food aid. Families in our community faced great food insecurity before this crisis hit. Today, they are also told to stay home and work remotely – except when your work is casual labor such as cleaning homes, doing laundry or construction, remote work is not possible. And these families don’t eat if they don’t work. We are increasing food aid and appreciate your support in helping us feed these children and their families. For $35/week we can provide enough basics so a family of four can eat at least one meal daily – with 255 families with children in our program, the unplanned-for cost could be as high as $9,000 per month.

If you would like to help us provide food aid in Kenya, please click here. We are all in this together, thank you!

Feiges Lead Personal Development Workshop with Graduates

Meghan and Evan Feige have long known about Friends of Ngong Road (FoNR). They grew up with Meg Meyer, the daughter of president and founder, Paula Meyer. They saw the work of Paula and the board and heard stories of children’s lives being transformed.

Last month, the Feiges took their experience with FoNR a step further. Requesting leave from their full-time jobs at Cargill and Target, they spent some time in Nairobi working with our recent high school graduates. They created and led a variety of workshops including: personality styles, mock interviews, personal brand, emotional intelligence and more. Meghan and Evan stressed the importance of personal exploration through interactive activities, case studies, reflection and dialogues. Such skills are not usually taught in school in Kenya, but the personal awareness and critical thinking abilities are imperative to students’ post-secondary experiences and their success in future careers.

Our recent high school graduates were surveyed after the experience and the majority commented that it was one of the most valuable trainings they had ever received and enthusiastically recommended that workshops be conducted for future graduates.

The Feiges enjoy seeking opportunities to learn about new cultures. The couple lived in Mexico City, where Meghan worked for Cargill. They saw poverty and injustice in Mexico and have seen similar inequities in their own community. But what they saw in Kenya was different. They knew the kids. There was trust among the families, who welcomed the Feiges into their homes. The students opened their hearts to welcome and teach them. The FoNR staff helped them better understand. They left the country with hope for the future and a new perspective on life.

Their experience continues to have an impact both in the U.S. and Kenya. Evan has worked with peers at Target to donate cases of professional clothing to our recent graduates who are applying for jobs. Our board and staff are working to ensure similar training workshops happen in the future. And, our high school graduates are more prepared than ever to reach their highest potential.

Thank you, Meghan and Evan, for partnering to transform lives!