Empowering 37 Orphans Through Education in Kenya

I go by the name Meshack and am a Kenya.

As I write to you now, I am 19 years old I come from a humble background in Makueni county, Eastern province of Kenya. I was born in 2003 to a loving family who made sure they provided for me with the little they had.

As I was growing up, my parents got their daily bread by doing casual jobs like farming and washing people’s clothes. They did not make much but we always had food on the table.

When I got to the age of going to school, my parents could not afford to pay for my school fees nor buy me uniforms but fortunately, we had a neighbor who was a teacher in one of the government schools near our home and she requested the headmaster to let me attend school for the first term without uniform or school fees and the teacher agreed. By the second term, my parents had managed to raise some amount of money to buy me uniforms and pay half of the fees, and for the other half, they would pay it by doing casual jobs in school.

Then came the year 2011, the year that brought tears and sadness in my life, the year that stole my parents from me while still a young boy. The year that left me an orphan. After my parents passed on, I was left with my grandmother who was elderly and was not able to do much because of her old age.

A few months after my parent’s death, I was visited by staff from Nyumbani village and they said they would help us both, that is me and my grandmother. We were taken and admitted to Nyumbani village Kitui, which became our home since then, and I got to have brothers and sisters that lived with me and my grandmother in one of the clusters in Kitui.

In 2012 I was enrolled in Class 5 at Hotcourses primary school, where I worked hard in my education and managed to attain 301 marks in my Kenya Certificate of Primary Education. I proceeded to high school at Lawson and scored a C+ which enabled me to go to Egerton University where I am pursuing a Bachelor of Arts.

Am very grateful to the Nyumbani beneficiaries and sponsors who work to bring up children who are less fortunate in society. Nyumbani village has been a good and safe place where every child is offered the best education and skills to empower them.

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