Zoom Fund for Student Sponsorships
Zoom Fund is a great group of kids in Nebraska who are helping me (Laurie) to fundraise for the children in Kisii. Thanks Ailani for writing this up!
Posts Categorized: The Basics
Great Books for Helping the Poor
I love learning. I love building my mind. Although I try to not be a perfectionist, I do desire to be as close to the best that I can be as possible. That’s why I’m always trying to grow, learn and improve. I believe in working smarter, not harder and what better way to do that to learn new things? I don’t have a degree in International Development, Business, Children’s Work or Sociology, (my degree is in Chemistry), but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be equipped properly. Here are 5 books that I’ve read in the past year that have really helped form and guide what I do in Kenya. They are some super helpful and suggested reading for missionaries, development workers or other people working with the poor.
Primary Project 2: Tutoring Family-less Children
A big thing I’ve been doing in Kisii is tutoring these sweet kids at the children’s home. I’m not just catching them up on things they’re calling behind in, but I’m teaching them the love of learning and teaching… and showing them love and attention.
Primary Project 1: Small Business Owner Training/Mentoring
Poverty alleviation is one of my main passions and it’s also one of the main things I’m working on here in Kisii Kenya. As the main activity in fighting poverty I’m training and mentoring small entrepreneurs with skills to improve their businesses, increase their profits and ultimately escape poverty.
2 Weeks of Poverty – Completed…
Well. I finished my 14 days of poverty: living on 2$ a day. I originally thought I would/could blog during that time, but it just didn’t work out. But here I am. And here’s the update. (When I say 1$, I’m also saying 100 Kenyan Shillings, usually that’s pretty close to the exchange rate.) Read the intro to this experiment here.
Two Dollars a Day for 2 Weeks
Things I learned about while living on 2 dollars a day:
- You don’t get to have your comforting foods
- You’ll be staying home more because you can’t afford the transport
- It’s hard to have a social life because you can’t pay for a motorcycle, you can’t go out to eat/drink and you don’t have enough food at home to entertain
- Keep the lights out when you can: because you can’t afford all that much electricity
- You better not have to go to the doctor, because that will definitely put you over budget
- I finally get why people don’t buy the larger supply and save the money per weight: because they just don’t have the money. Period.
There were things that I would really have liked to do during this period, but I just couldn’t afford it. Even if I wouldn’t spend any money at this place I wanted to go to, I couldn’t even afford the 1-2$ transport to get there and back.
Two Weeks of Poverty
In a way I feel like a pretentious, privleged fool for doing this. In another way, I feel like I have to.
2018 – LooKing aHead.
2018 Projects
I have two exciting projects that I’ve already started and am excited to continue this year. Here’s a video about my rough plan for the year.
Tutoring at Children’s Home
One is tutoring the kids who are struggling in school, who live at the children’s home. I’m starting with the kids who are actually schooled at the children’s home, which is 2 levels of preschool and kindergarten. The kids never get any one on one time educationally, so if they fall behind, they’re screwed. And really the classes are really bad. In 2017 I had been helping the kids with colors, letters, numbers and reading in an informal way. Now I’m actually taking the kids, one at a time, to a separate room so we can actually work on learning what the individual kid needs to learn.
2017 – WhAt it was AbouT.
2018 is here already! I apologize for doing a bad job of communicating what I was doing in 2017. I was just trying to get a feel for everything around me. But I’ve written up a good 2017 summary and I’m ready to share it with you! If you donated 50$ or more in 2017, you are welcome to request the 2017 FULL/serious report of the year. It’s a PDF with lots of nitty-gritty details. Just ask! But, below is a brief overview about what I did in 2017.
Why I Haven’t Been Blogging or Posting Much
First, What I’ve Been Up To:
Teaching Reading to Struggling Readers at an Elementary School
I’ve been teaching reading to some struggling readers at an elementary school, grades 4-7. I did this for one week before they had a 3 week break. This last week it started up again. I’m excited to get it going again. There’s a boy in 7th grade who doesn’t know the alphabet. I’m working with him one on one. He is making progress and I’m hopeful for him.
Another interesting thing is Grades 4 and 5 don’t speak English well enough for me to teach them in English. So… I’m trying to do the class mostly in Swahili! So that has been interesting and fun.
Part 2 Begins
The adventure has officially begun! I arrived in Kenya on March 1st and arrived in Kisii on March 2nd. It’s so nice to be back here. It feels very right.