Featured Image

Great Books for Helping the Poor

Posted by Laurie

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.

Featured Image

Primary Project 1: Small Business Owner Training/Mentoring

Posted by Laurie

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.

Featured Image

2018 – LooKing aHead.

Posted by Laurie

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.

Featured Image

Teaching and Making Websites

Posted by Laurie

smallDSCN2405

A 5 min walk from my Kalisizo home.

20160113_132304

Some serious local cuties.

smallDSCN2438

Another 5 min walk from my Kalisizo home.

I have spent the past month teaching a basic English class for adults and working on a website for a non-profit in rural Uganda, south of the Equator, in Kalisizo.

This has, hands down, been the best month of my life. Every day is not “perfect” and there are things I dislike but duh, that’s life. In fact, there were times that were VERY hard. But again, that’s life and it always felt good once the struggle passed.

My English Classes

I have two classes, each meets two times a week. This is my last week. 🙁 At the first class, many of the students, when greeted with “Hi” or “Hello”, would reply “I’m fine”, which is very understandable when you consider how their language, Luganda, is. They don’t have “Hi” or “Hello” in Luganda. Their simplest greeting is “How are you?”. So I can see why some have trouble with “hi”. read more