Student's Idea Lights up Children's Lives in Kenya

JUNE 2009 — Grace Wacera, a single mother of seven, lives in Kenya's Rift Valley Province. She chips building blocks for a living, earning less than $1 a day, hardly enough to feed her family.

Wacera's daughter Joyce, 16, dreams of attending college to make life easier for herself and her family. She wakes each morning at 5, gets ready for school in the dark, and walks several kilometers on an empty stomach to Kamathatha Primary School on the outskirts of Gilgil, her hometown. Like 85 percent of Kenyans, Joyce's home is not connected to the electrical grid. Kerosene for the family's small tin lamp costs about $1 per week, a full day's wages.

"We sometimes go for a week without kerosene to light the lamp because my mother does not have money," Joyce says. On the few days it is lit, the wick emits heavy black smoke that pollutes the single-room home, posing a health risk to the family. The lack of a reliable source of light makes it difficult for Joyce to study, which is critical if she is to graduate high school and be accepted to college.

As 17-year-old Morgan Pope from Hoggard High School in North Carolina approached her own graduation, she was moved by the plight of her peers, like Joyce, in Africa. So she inspired her friends and neighbors to raise funds to buy flashlights for several schools in Kenya. "After visiting Africa on a mission to work with children, I was inspired to help the children get an education by providing lights for them to do their homework," she says. "I believe education is a way out of the poverty cycle."

Charlotte French, director of Family Health International's The Tomorrow Project, which helps communities in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nepal address the myriad needs of vulnerable children and their families, attends church with Morgan. When she heard about Pope's project, she encouraged her and offered to connect her with needy families through The Tomorrow Project^SM as part of a pilot initiative to help children improve their grades.

"For this pilot phase, we selected children from families affected by HIV and AIDS or displaced from their homes by post-election violence," says French. Last month she accompanied Morgan to present 120 hand-cranked flashlights to Joyce's family and to others several low-income urban neighborhoods and villages in the Rift Valley and Coast Province. The flashlights will benefit 120 families and approximately 350 to 400 children.

Aside from Joyce and her classmates, two other students who are using the flashlights are John Gitonga and his twin sister Cecilia Wangui, of Njoro Township. Their mother is often ill and in the hospital. During such times the twins and an older sister Gladys Njoki, rely on well-wishers for food. But no one gives them money for kerosene, so the two had resorted to burning old car tire tubes to light their single-room, mud-walled home. The new flashlight Morgan's senior project provided means no more smoke and, with diligence, a better chance for John and Cecilia to pass their exams.

The flashlights Morgan helped distribute are one of the most viable options for poor families in Africa. Using light emitting diode (LED) technology, the flashlights are energy efficient and inexpensive ($10 each). Because they are charged mechanically by hand-winding, there are no maintenance costs, such as batteries. A minute's cranking provides Joyce and her classmates enough light to read by for more than one hour.
 
That's $10 well spent for Morgan and her classmates and one minute well invested for Joyce.

PHOTOS: (Top) Kenyan schoolgirls try out their new hand-cranked flashlights. (Bottom) Joyce, with her mother and sister, now has a hand-cranked flashlight to study by, making it easier for her to finish her education, and to save money on kerosene. (Photos by Charlotte French, top, and George Obanyi)

— George Obanyi

Through The Tomorrow Project, Family Health International is helping to find sustainable solutions to the difficulties families face in communities where we work. Activities we support include income-generating activities and economic strengthening; protection from forced labor and prostitution; psychosocial support; healthcare; shelter, clean water, and sanitation; education and vocational training; and food and nutritional support.