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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Annual Appeal Meets the Match and More!

We raised over $130,000! We made our match, and more! The Truscott Family Match of $60,000 for the 2016 Annual Appeal was more than reached with a total of $71,000 raised from individuals. That’s over $130,000 with the match! Thank you to all who helped ensure every child in our program has a chance to change the trajectory of their life.

That chance starts with the education provided by sponsors for each child, however, we know that if students are sick, hungry, suffering from the trauma of losing one or both parents, or feeling hopeless, they are not learning. The annual appeal provides funding for supplemental programs to remove barriers to education and provide needed resources for success. It helps provide meals, medical care, and a supportive community of caseworkers.

This year’s annual appeal success of over $130,000 could cover the cost of 8,666 months of meals for a child, 520 trunks full of uniforms, shoes, and supplies for boarding school students, or 650 doctor visits. It will give 400 children access to education and support an opportunity to succeed that they otherwise would not have.

Thank you for helping to change lives. From the children, their families, and Friends of Ngong Road, “Asante Sana.” Thank you very much.

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Pentair Foundation joins us in transforming lives!

Friends of Ngong Road is pleased to announce it has received a $15,000 grant from the Pentair Foundation. “The generous grant from the Pentair Foundation will allow us to ensure all children in our program have access to education, safety and well-being services, and a supportive community. It will help children with so many barriers to education gain access to the tools and resources to transform their lives through education,” says Lacey Kraft, Development Director.

Pentair Foundation Logo

Pentair, a diversified global manufacturer, aims to improve the quality of life of people around the world by helping its customers produce more food, energy, and efficiency from each drop of water while protecting people and the environment. The Pentair Foundation supports this mission through philanthropic efforts focused on providing greater access to clean, safe water and food, investing in sustainable agriculture to increase food production, promoting STEM education, and supporting the communities where its employees live and work.

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Dr. Sally Kenney joins Friends of Ngong Road Board of Directors

Friends of Ngong Road has added an educator to its board of directors. A native of Iowa, Sally J. Kenney earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Iowa, a B.A. and M.A. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.  From 1989-1995, she held a joint appointment in Political Science, Women’s Studies, and Law at the University of Iowa.

  She served on the faculty at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs from 1995-2009 where she also directed the Center on Women and Public Policy. She joined Tulane University in 2010 as the first Newcomb College Endowed Chair, the executive director of the Newcomb College Institute, and a Professor of Political Science.  The Newcomb College Institute is an interdisciplinary, academic center whose mission is to educate undergraduate women about leadership.  In that role, she pioneered a service learning summer program to bring Tulane students to NRCF’s annual camp.  Last year, she led three students.

Sally’s research interests include gender and judging, judicial selection, feminist social movements, women and electoral politics, the European Court of Justice, exclusionary employment policies, and pregnancy discrimination. Her latest book is Gender and Justice: Why Women in the Judiciary Really Matter (2013).  She has close relationships with the Kenyan Women’s Judges Association.  Her current research focuses on sexual assault on campus and women’s leadership.  She also studies Swahili.

Sally has been to Kenya four times, first in 2011, as a sponsor of Sharon. In the intervening years, she sponsored three children and met NRCF students through camp participation in 2015 and 2016. Sally and her husband Norman Foster have no children of their own.  Sally met Emmanuel Jal, a former child warrior who runs a program for Sudanese orphans in Kenya last summer. Jal believes that Sudan has a proverb that whoever takes in an orphan will never feel lonely in old age. Sally feels fortunate to be involved in this project, which now has 400 children, she feels like they are her own

In the Illumini Podcast, Steve Kotvis interviews Sally about how volunteers bring their unique talents to Friends of Ngong Road and Ngong Road Children’s Foundation. Sally explores sponsor connections’ value in Ngong Road Children’s Foundation program, highlighting insightful findings.

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Partnership with Newcomb Institute

New to camp last summer was a partnership with the Newcomb Institute of Tulane University. Sally Kenney of the Newcomb Institute helped launch the program where students studied Women and Social Development in Kenya prior to traveling. Once they arrived, days were filled with meeting the Friends of Ngong Road staff, children, and families, seeing the animals, learning more about Kenya, and of course, camp! The Tulane students each prepared lessons that they taught to students at camp and participated in the daily activities of camp. Read more about the partnership in the Newcomb newsletter.