The projects are required to submit periodic reports and provide statements that our funds were used for the purpose they were intended. In addition, our local volunteers work directly with the projects and are there to provide assistance and oversight.
We engage local volunteers, people who are known to us and are not employed by the projects, to supervise activities on the ground and ensure that our funds are well spent. Each of these individuals have first-hand knowledge of the project and live nearby to provide oversight.
Our mission is to support children, but we’ve found that it’s just as important to support their teachers. The schools that we help finance are desperately poor, but provide vital services to their pupils that are often unavailable in local communities. At the heart of their work are teachers, hard-working folks who sacrifice much to serve their students. What we do by paying salaries and providing health care is inject a bit of stability and help make sure that good teachers stay in their classrooms and do what they do best – teach students.
We use several criteria. Firstly, we focus on projects that are community-based and are run by local people. We also try to select projects that are small and are unlikely to receive support from large international donors. The most important criteria, however, is that the project is closely associated with a colleague or friend, someone we know who will work with the project on the ground as a volunteer and supervise the use of our funds.
We currently work in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania, but in the past we also provided support to a small number of projects in Malawi and Uganda.
Helping children is the main thrust of our work, but we also help the organizations we work with to operate more efficiently. This means working with them to get their message out to donors, helping them to raise money and manage their funds more efficiently.
Our mission is to help African children lead healthier, more productive lives. To achieve that goal we provide funding for projects that support orphans and girls, ensure that kids receive an education and make sure that they’re well cared for and secure.
In 2016, our projects benefitted 700 children. This includes kids who received school lunches, scholarship students and girls who were kept safe from genital cutting and childhood marriage.
