Kenya


Free the Children first started operating in Kenya in 1999 within the Narok South District. Through the Adopt a Village program they have engaged many communities across the Mara, built schools, libraries, kitchens and helped with various
water projects. In 2002, Kenya’s new government made primary education free, this was announced in the national newspaper on a Friday. On the coming Monday more than one million children went to school for their first time. All the schools in Kenya were caught off guard. Free the Children has helped them build more schools and schoolrooms, while the government is in charge maintaining them, hiring school teachers and providing supplies and resources for the children.
As of 2003 only 56% of people in Kenya live on less than $17 per month in rural areas. About 30% live in extreme poverty on less than a $1 a day. The areas where Free the Children work in Kenya is Narok South District and there is still one in every 10 Kenyan children that die before their fifth birthday. Free
the Children’s organization is governed by its core values. The core values help shape their culture and define who they really are. From Canada to Kenya to Ecuador each team member knows each core value by heart. The coolest things is that at the Kenya’s Bogani cottages the staff members they won’t only share the core values , but they will share which core value that they focused on putting into practice for that day.

History


Free The Children Organization was birthed in 1995 by a 12 year old boy named Craig Kielburger. One day while Craig was flipping through the Toronto Star he discovered a heart breaking story that changed his life. The story was about a boy named Iqbal who was sold into slavery at the age of four. Even though his life was cut short, he still made a huge impact on the world. For six years of his life, he was chained to a carpet-weaving loom. lqbal stood up for children’s rights, and this captured the attention of the whole world. When the media got wind of what Iqbal was doing, the captures decided to kill him. At the age of 12, lqbal lost his life in the process of defending the rights of children. This story inspired Craig so much that he gathered 11 of his school friends to help him begin to fight for child labour. The same year Free The Children began, Craig took a seven week trip to South Asia to learn about child labour. In 1999 when Craig was 16, he wrote a book called Free the Children .  The book explained his trip to South and the founding of his charity. It is so amazing how one person can start something so small and turn it into something huge.






















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