Building A Dream-the Next Step

If ever you wished to make a real sustainable change in the world... here is your chance.

Please help us get to 17
Only  2 left to send 17 bright, eager Kenyan students to secondary school... only $621 USD to the finish line!!!  Breaking it down, $121 is needed to complete the funding for one of the two remaining with $500 remaining for the final student.  This is for the full next year (starting January) including boarding!!

• 17 Kenyan students--children who now work alongside their mothers in their dairy herd business to create a better life.

• 17 Kenyan students---most of whom attend Magnate school, ranked 89th nationally, and have helped to propel the school to its current #1 ranking in test scores in the entire region of over 12,000 students.

• 17 Kenyan students---bright, aggressive and hungry, both literally and figuratively.

• 17 Kenyan students---studying for their lives…literally, and for the future economic health of their families

15 have been funded.
   2 have not.

Please help us get to 17.

Click Donate Now to improve the quality of life for families who want more than anything to give their children an education and a new life*

* If you are in Kenya and wish to help, you can MPESA your donation to Ruth and I at: 0724 21 8962. If you wish to write a check, please make it out to David Bernard-Stevens and send it to 501 Hazelwood Drive, Lincoln, Nebraska 68510. If you wish to wire transfer a donation let me know and I will send you the appropriate account and Swift codes. We will confirm receipt of all donations and make sure your donation gets to the correct account.


The Back Story:
A few years ago there were a group of single Kenyan women simply living a life of survival in rural Kenya. They are all brewers of illegal alcohol and life was a matter of just surviving until the next day. For their children, there simply was no hope of most of them going to primary school with few if any going to high school. The school fees were simply too much for their meager survival budgets.

Four elderly women formed a group of eventually 14 other brewers who, with no economic help, no donations from church groups or government programs (after all, they were illegal brewers), they were able to help each other create small businesses so that each could survive without the income from brewing.

In about two years they created 14 small businesses in an area where there was no job creation and massive unemployment. Their long-term dream was to create a dairy herd large enough to take them, their families, and, eventually, their community out of poverty forever. It was a bold dream hastened by funds donated online by generous souls from around the world, and the women bought three cows, 1.9 acres of land, and a newly built zero-grazing dairy facility. And, now, they have nine cows.

Within about five years as the herd increases and the new feeding techniques begin to increase the current milk production per cow, the women will make a profit.

Until then, however, their most overriding dream is to send their children to secondary school, as they know that the only real chance their children have to escape poverty themselves is an education.

Once again, online angels stepped up, and now is the 4th year of donations for secondary school fees. This year each woman must pay 5,000 shillings for each child’s fees, who is being helped in their secondary school fees. Within five years, the women will be able to fund all of the fees themselves through their dairy operation.

So that is a brief update on the "why" of this project to raise funds for 17 children here in Kenya. If we fail to meet our goal, I know that most of the children will have to stay home, or some of the women will return to brewing. Lately the region is cracking down on illegal brewing, and many of the women brewers are being put in jail with large fines or chased underground. Children whose mothers are in jail are simply left to fend for themselves until their mother returns. Life is hard.

Finally may each of you who have helped in the past in so many ways and those who will be continuing to help us now, be blessed. May your spirit be at peace as you take the steps each day to be and make a difference in the world.

With love from David and Ruth Bernard-Stevens