Empower, Engage, Educate in Rural Kenya!

Friends:

After twelve amazing years as the U.S. Executive Director and the previous eight years as a volunteer at Kenya Connect, I will be retiring this month.

As you can imagine, this is bittersweet for me since Kenya Connect has been such a gift and a large part of my life. I am deeply grateful to our incredible staff who have generously taught me so much and the community who has welcomed me in so many ways. However, it is time for me to spend more time with the elders in my family and to make space for a new leader to provide fresh ideas, energy and connections for Kenya Connect. I am proud of all that we have accomplished together including the growth of the staff and improved compensation, increased donations and grants to support the vision and mission, the building of the Library Learning Center, the purchase of three vehicles that have made way for our mobile library, technology and empowerment programs, the Kenya Connect farm and parent income generation programs like beekeeping and sewing, two strategic plans including our latest that has created six focus areas and guiding over 300 volunteers to Wamunyu to support our work. It brings me so much joy to share the incredible work of Kenya Connect with friends and partners around the world and I am grateful that students, teachers and parents have embraced our work with enthusiasm and excitement.

I am also thankful to our incredible Board of Trustees. The Board of 14 is truly a “working” board and has worked tirelessly to support the mission of Kenya Connect to provide children with options and new pathways. When I shared my decision to retire with them last year, they began to thoughtfully plan for the transition and a search for the next Executive Director. 

 I am thrilled to share that Lindsay Kincaid will serve as Kenya Connect's Executive Director. Lindsay is well known to Kenya Connect, as a partner, volunteer and board member. Her commitment to our mission combined with her background in education and international development will help her steward Kenya Connect into the future.

Lindsay Kincaid is an educator, researcher, and nonprofit leader who helps communities strengthen learning — by supporting educators, building partnerships, and growing sustainable programs. Her career has spanned public school classrooms and global nonprofit leadership, with a steady focus on locally led work and long-term capacity building. 

Most recently, Lindsay served as Chief Program Officer at Team4Tech, where she advanced the organization’s approach to sustained partner support and helped grow a global Community of Practice connecting educators and community-based organizations across continents to share tools, training, and best practices. Through this work, she collaborated closely with Kenya Connect and later joined the Kenya Connect Board of Trustees (USA) in June 2025.

Lindsay began her career as a public high school teacher in Kansas, teaching English, video production, and IB Film Studies, and coaching students in spoken word poetry. She later led open education initiatives at the CK-12 Foundation, served as adjunct faculty with the Johns Hopkins School of Education, and contributed to global education innovation as a Fellow with MIT Solve and the Jacobs Foundation.

As I head to my new chapter, I do so full of hope, excitement and gratitude that we have had this opportunity to make something really special for the 18,000 children, 500 teachers and parents in the extraordinary village of Wamunyu. I want to thank you for your generous donations. Kenya Connect would not be where we are today without your generosity and partnership.

With deep thanks!

Being able to read and do math are essential for academic achievement and life. Just imagine what your life would be like if you couldn't read. It's not just about learning in school. Reading opens doors to jobs and makes day-to-day living easier. Recently, we did a literacy assessment at six of our partner schools and discovered that only 3% of students in grades three through seven could read fluently and able to comprehend what they are reading. We were stunned and discouraged. As a result, we are training teachers at those schools on how to provide remedial programs to help struggling learners to become readers. The assessment tool gives us data on where the children are stumped. Is it letter recognition, reading a simple word or comprehending a full sentence?

Thanks to donors like you, we have offered two trainings on "teaching at the right level" and providing the teachers with new tools and materials to help the learners. In addition, we are purchasing more early readers for our library and conducting school break reading camps. After a recent training, teacher Veronicah shared, "We have light at the end of the tunnel. This is what we needed. One struggling reader in grade 4 approached me and asked, 'teacher, are you sure that one day I will read?' It truly touched my heart and I began a foundational literacy club for struggling learners with the support of Kenya Connect" 

Meanwhile, teachers have reported that children are also challenged with math. As a result, we have partnered with an NGO providing a math enrichment program that the students can access on a computer tablet. Once a week, we bring the tablets to a school and the students do a variety of math games including patterns, geometry, addition, substraction, multiplication and division. It's fun, colorful and engaging. We are measuring their progress and asking teachers what difference they are seeing when they do math in class.

These two programs are supporting teachers with new strategies for foundational literacy and numeracy. We are truly grateful to donors like you who are supporting children to be readers and competent in math. Thank you!