A critical component of our program is the Case Manager position.  Case Managers get to know each of their assigned children and monitor and support the needs of every child in our program.  In each case, they are college or university graduates typically with degrees in community work, child development, or a related field. Case Managers are:

•  Assigned approximately 60 children each.
• Visit each child’s home annually and visit the school three times each year (primary level) to assess the children’s progress, safety, and needs.  For secondary school students, Case Managers visit the student’s home and school annually and meet with them at least annually in the office to develop a guidance plan.
• Assigned volunteer assistants to help them carry out their work, particularly at Saturday Program when nearly all the children are present.
• Responsible for entering relevant data on all of their assigned children in our database, including records of school and home visits, health, school reports, letters sent to or received from sponsors, etc.

Biographies of each of our Case Managers are available in “Our Staff in Kenya”

The key to our program’s success is the supportive community provided to the student, contributing to their success and ability to transform their lives. We provide case management support, a weekly Saturday Program, and annual camp and encourage parental involvement through an advisory committee of parents and guardians to maximize student success. Additionally, beyond the financial support sponsors provide, they often offer emotional support to their sponsored students.

Case Manager Support

One of the most critical components of our program is the role of the Case Manager. Case Managers get to know each of their assigned children and monitor and support their needs. Case Managers are college or university graduates and typically have a degree in social work, community work, child development, or a related field. Learn more about each of our Case Managers on the Kenyan staff page located here.

Case Manager duties are wide-ranging but include the following:

• Ensure that all students receive and actively participate in quality education by monitoring their performance and that of the schools they attend. This includes maintaining a relationship with each school through regular visits, obtaining additional educational support as needed, and ensuring school fees are paid. 
• Engage with each student and their family through home visits to assess their health, living situation, and other needs. This includes providing basic health and nutritional support, identifying drug or substance abuse and offering mental health counseling, referring students to other resources as needed.
• Work with each student to develop individualized guidance plans to help students identify and work towards goals. 
• Encourage students to maintain a strong relationship with their sponsor through regular communication. 

Advisory Committee

Similar to PTA programs in United States schools, we encourage community participation to maximize the program’s impact. The Advisory Committee consists of both parents/guardians and students. It serves as an advocate for the organization to the community it represents by providing feedback. Its primary mandate is to deal with and raise issues related to our programs and give advice or support to the Kenyan staff.

Saturday Program

A weekly Saturday Program, which is mandatory for primary school students, is held at a school field in Ngando slum. Volunteers, many of whom are alumni of the program, help the staff host the Saturday Program. 

Students participate in fun activities, including games and music. Many students visit the library before the start of each Saturday Program and check out books to read to themselves or out loud to an appreciative audience. Case Managers also coordinate writing letters to sponsors. 

A fresh lunch is prepared and served by our cooks. A nurse distributes multivitamins and deworming pills regularly and meets with individual children who are ill, referring them to clinics or prescribing treatment as appropriate. 

Check out the 2 ½ minute video below about our program produced by KMSP-TV featuring our Saturday Program. Learn more…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=auCyfIYs3Zw

Camp

Each August, with the help of volunteers, we host various camps where students have the opportunity to get out of their normal setting and spend time in a healthy, stimulating environment focused on learning and fun. Learn more.

While our primary purpose is to provide education, we know that nutrition, good health, and a safe living environment are essential to learning.  To maximize student success, we support the health and well-being of our students by providing regular meals and medical care, in addition, to support and training programs for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Drug Awareness and Abuse, and Mental Health.

Nutrition

Since the inception of our program, we have provided our students with a nutritious breakfast and lunch at school. Through these programs, each elementary-age child receives at least two meals daily during the school week. We offer meals directly to our students in Nelson Mandela Elementary and contract caterers to cook for our students at our other elementary schools. High school students are in boarding school and receive three meals a day.

We provide lunch each Saturday during the Saturday Program and both breakfast and lunch during school holidays and breaks. Our caterers ensure students get a balanced diet by cooking a variety of meals for the students, including “Chapati,” a flatbread that is a favorite of Kenyan children. 

Case managers often identify situations where families need food aid during home or school visits. Families in a particularly dire situation may request family food aid, and we provide basic foods to address the temporary problem.  

Health Care

During the Saturday Program, our contracted nurse performs routine exams on a rotating basis and sees students who are ill. If a student becomes ill, their parent or guardian visits the Ngong Road Children’s Foundation administrative office for a voucher to visit a clinic for treatment. 

Clean water and sanitation facilities are often unsafe in parts of Kenya including Nairobi.  Therefore, an essential preventative treatment is deworming medications which our Saturday Program nurse regularly administers in addition to weekly multivitamins. We also provide basic dental and vision care.

Drug and Substance Abuse Awareness and Mental Health 

We serve some of the most vulnerable children on the planet. Life in the slums can be unimaginable so our students must receive the best support to ensure they can transform their lives. 

Drug use is a reality for many living in the slums. Given the prevalence of crime, gang violence, mental illness, and peer pressure, we know our students’ success can be derailed by drug usage. That’s why we educate our students about drugs and their impact on one’s life. Our program creates awareness of drugs and substance abuse and information on the types of drugs abused and empowers students to adopt healthy behaviors that prevent abuse and the associated risks.

It’s also vital that we educate our students about developing and maintaining good mental health. To transform the lives of students, we want them to be able to identify any mental health concerns and know what to do if problems arise so that they can seek help.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Program.

Many of our students have witnessed family members suffer or die. The Kenyan education sector largely promotes an abstinence-only curriculum, failing to emphasize important topics of contraception, and sexually transmitted diseases. The knowledge gap perpetuates common myths such as that contraceptives can cause infertility.

Recognizing that many young people are sexually active and some are forced or coerced into sexual activity, we want to ensure that adolescents in our program have the resources and knowledge to make informed decisions. Based on student focus groups and extensive research on best practices in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) education, we worked with Planned Parenthood Global and Tulane University to develop a Youth Peer Provider (YPP) SRH Program. 

A dozen post-secondary students along with the staff are trained to provide accurate SRH information and receive coaching on how to share this knowledge with their peers. They also receive condoms and vouchers for access to contraception, emergency contraception, and STI testing which they disseminate.

Our Story

Our Beginnings

Friends of Ngong Road was founded in 2006 by Paula Meyer after a family trip to Kenya. She was disturbed by the number of children who could not attend school. These impoverished families were simply unable to afford the cost of modest school fees or a school uniform.

Who We Serve

The Dagoretti slum in Nairobi is home to approximately 200,000 people living in 5.2 square miles of cramped quarters. They have inadequate housing and have little access to clean water, sanitation, healthcare, schools, and other essential public services.  These conditions are unimaginable to those who have never seen them.

For a child living in the slums of Nairobi, the only real opportunity to pull themselves, and potentially their families, out of poverty and the slums is to get a good, well-paying job. To get a good job, one needs an education.

Today, we have a thriving program with many students and a growing group of successfully employed alumni, some of whom are nurses, lawyers, engineers, chefs, digital marketers, and entrepreneurs.  See our outcomes.

What is Ngong Road

In Swahili, “Ngong” means “knuckles”. The Ngong Hills are named after their shape, which looks like the knuckles on a fist. Our organization is named after ‘Ngong Road’, a busy two-lane road at the base of the Ngong Hills, on the outskirts of Nairobi. The Dagoretti slum, where our students live, sits alongside this road. 

While traveling down Ngong Road, you experience loud music, packed vehicles, many pedestrians, and merchants selling everything from meats and produce to clothing and furniture. Our campus also sits along this road, while our students participate in our Saturday Program at a field next to our office, facing Ngong Road. It is truly the ‘main street’ of our students’ lives.

Friends of Ngong Road Children’s Foundation

Our two organizations work closely together to support and empower our students. Friends of Ngong Road’s U.S. staff, Board, and volunteers lead fundraising, sponsorship recruitment, and provide expertise and guidance to Ngong Road Children’s Foundation based in Kenya.

The Kenya staff runs the day-to-day operations, student recruitment, case management, and additional programming. The program touches the students, their families, and the schools they attend.