Let's send a Kenyan Girl to High School!

As you may already know, I spent summer 2011 in East Africa on a self-directed, self-funded fellowship affiliated with the Daraja Academy of Kenya. Daraja is located outside of the city of Nanyuki, Kenya, an approximately four hour drive north of the country's capital city, Nairobi.

In theory, a high school education is free in Kenya. In reality, it is not. As a result many Kenyan youth with a lot of potential and big dreams are unable to complete their educational goals. Daraja Academy of Kenya officially opened its doors in February 2009, to provide a high school education (and much more) to 100+ of Kenya's amazing but very under-resourced young women. We will graduate our first class this December!

The school is supported by individual donors like you and me, as well as the San Francisco Bay Area based Carr Educational Foundation. As a member of the Carr Educational Foundation Board of Director's Volunteer Committee, I have committed to fundraising for Daraja as part of this year's Bay to Breakers Fundraising Campaign.

Bay to Breakers is a 7.46 mile race that takes place in San Francisco each summer. Runners start at the Bay on the east side of the city, and run across the city to the ocean breakers on the western side of the city. Daraja fundraisers will be participating in the race again this year - including me! If I am unable to run the course on May 20 then I pledge to run 4 trail miles, followed by 4 miles (288 laps) in the pool on race day - Sunday, May 20.

Please support me and the ladies of Daraja by making a contribution of any amount by the Sunday, May 20 deadline. Thank you so much for your support! If you are so inclined then please invite your friends to help, too!

Enjoy my Daraja Academy of Kenya Video Scrapbook! I made it especially for my fundraising campaign.

- Nicole

East Africa Day 2: Bay to Breakers

photo: Three Daraja students getting ready for our Bay to Breakers run!

Attended the Protestant Sunday services in the AM, entirely student run, and held in one of the classrooms. (The Protestant students meet in one room, the Catholic students meet in another room, and the Muslim students meet in an on-campus Mosque.) Services were beautiful – lots of singing and dancing – the students welcomed me and had me go to the front of the room to introduce myself. We sang a song with a chorus that goes something like: "The best way to be happy is to make someone else happy, and to have a little Heaven down here." It involved turning to your neighbor, holding hands, and singing to each other. Very cute!

After services I was given a campus tour by three students - including the compost center which previous volunteers had set up, followed by a volunteer Orientation given to Pamela and I by Andy.

Then we held our own version of San Francisco's Bay to Breakers run to coincide with the Daraja fundraiser that Jason and Jenni who founded and run the school, are holding this weekend in the Bay Area. The girls ran 28 laps around a small course that had been mapped out on campus, wearing the official B2B t-shirts that Andy had brought back to campus from San Francisco, many of the girls in their Daraja uniform skirts, and in running shoes – some of which I recognized from the box that Caitie sent over to Daraja last fall! I saw the pair of Saucony's that I'd sent over – with the grooves now embedded with red Kenya dirt. And we come full circle, because now I am finally here on campus myself - not just the shoes:)

Videos and photos from today's event will be posted online, but are not up yet – I recorded some video footage using one of Daraja's flip cameras. Plus the below footage on my camera, which was taking too long to upload today.

The B2B Daraja Bay Area supporters raised $52,000 which is 4+ million Kenyan Shillings!!! If you're in the Bay Area then you might have seen Jenni and Jason on TV with the female winner of this year's race, a Kenyan woman named Lineth Chepkurui who ran the race in a Darja shirt and was offering us her support. (She also won the race last year, when I was in SF.)