Friends of Nairoshi Foundation UK
Supporting The Nairoshi Foundation and their community school in Ewaso Ngiro, rural Maasai lands in southern Kenya
About Us
A very worthy cause
Hello! And thank you for visiting our website. We are Nicola and Stephen Mills, keen travellers always hungry for new experiences. In January 2020 we first connected with our friend, founder
and Director of The Nairoshi Foundation, David
Nkuito, via the Workaway volunteering community.
We signed up for 2 weeks volunteering at their primary school Building Hope Academy and ended up staying for 4 weeks. We have maintained contact with David since 2020 and helped to fundraise for the school and foundation. We visited again in March 2023 and made a decision to formalise our fundraising by setting up Friends of Nairoshi Foundation UK through the Givingworks charitable giving platform. We consider David and his community an extension of our family.
The Nairoshi Foundation is a Kenyan-registered community organisation. Through generous donations from supporters across the world and contributions from David's small safari business, they work hard to deliver high quality education to children in their rural Maasai community who would otherwise be unlikely to go to school.
They ensure the children move on to good quality high schools, support widowed mothers and their children, as well as educating young girls and offering them protection from FGM. You can read blogs from our volunteer time at the school here.
Friends of Nairoshi Foundation UK is a Micro-Trust of GivingWorks | Charity
Number – 1078770
Building a sustainable future
During our first visit to Building Hope Academy we were immediately struck by the smooth running of the school, the investment David has in his community (he truly has a heart of gold), and how everyone in the community comes together to make the children's education a success.
Thanks to the support of donations from dedicated supporters the school has grown from 1 classroom at the start to 10 classrooms and over 300 students now. Some of the children are now succeeding at high school and David and his team consistently top the league tables for exam performance in the area.
Too often across our travels in East Africa we have seen derelict buildings where a fundraising project had built a school for the local area but, without continued investment or projects focused on the longer term future, the school buildings lie empty and unused. The Nairoshi Foundation's goal is to become fully self-funded, and with the help of their friends across the world we truly believe they can achieve this.
Challenges and future projects - Get involved!
Facing the significant challenges of the global pandemic, climate change causing drought and the worldwide cost of living crisis, the Nairoshi Foundation marches on, working towards a sustainable future.
As we learn some more about running a registered charitable foundation (and building a website!) we'll share more of the successes and challenges facing David and his community, along with how you can help support and be a part of their mission.
Most recently, 2 dormitory blocks have been built for children travelling to the school from further afield, with the intention being that fees from boarders will help to fund the running of the school. However, with the rising cost of living, income from the boarders cannot be guaranteed and is mostly being used to cover the increasing costs of rice and beans to ensure all of the children receive lunch every day
Longstanding friends of the Nairoshi Foundation, alongside the Rotary Club of Calgary, Canada, have recently installed a water filtration system, meaning that for the first time the children and staff can safely drink water from a tap.
Current fundraising efforts are focussed on the building of two much needed classrooms. As the school has grown, the school hall/dining area has been repurposed into temporary classrooms so the children are eating outside and there is no inside areas to conduct assemblies etc.
Friends of Nairoshi Foundation UK is a Micro-Trust of GivingWorks | Charity Number – 1078770
help our cause
We are currently raising funds to build the 2 much needed new classrooms at the school. This will ensure good learning spaces for all of the grade classes and the return of the school hall/dining room, which has had to be re-purposed into classrooms as the school has grown.