stories / education
Amani's first day of secondary school.
By Grace Mwende · March 14, 2025 · 6 min read
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The Story
Location: Kibera, Nairobi
Program: Education Scholarship
Age: 13
Status: Enrolled, Form One
Orphaned at nine, Amani spent four years out of school helping her grandmother sell vegetables at the corner of Olympic Estate. School fees were a distant dream — until a sponsor said yes.
The morning of January 6, Amani was up before sunrise. Her uniform — pressed the night before — hung on the back of the door. Her grandmother, Mama Lydia, walked her the two kilometers to St. Mary’s Secondary, holding her hand the entire way.
“I never thought this day would come,” Amani said, tears in her eyes as she stepped through the school gate. “For four years I watched my friends in their uniforms. Now it’s me.”
When I put on that uniform, I felt like God was telling me — your story is not over. It is just beginning.
Where she started.
When our outreach team first met Amani in 2021, she was carrying a five-liter jerrycan of water back from the borehole. She was nine years old. Her mother had passed two years earlier; her father, the year before that.
Mama Lydia, then sixty-eight, took her in along with two cousins. Three children, one widow, one room. Education was not on the table.
Amani at her grandmother’s stall, 2022.
First day at St. Mary’s Secondary, January 2025.
What changed.
Through our Education Scholarship program — funded by 47 monthly partners — Amani’s tuition, books, uniform, and lunch are fully covered for four years. A counselor checks in weekly. Mama Lydia receives a small monthly food stipend so Amani never has to choose between school and the family.
This is what restoration looks like: not charity dropped from above, but a community walking with one girl, one widow, one family at a time.
4 years
of secondary school covered
47
monthly partners behind her
1 family
restored, one step at a time
Sponsor the next Amani.
GHS 700/month covers tuition, uniform, books and lunch for one child for a full school year.