Fauzia was the eldest of three siblings, her parents having passed away a few years prior. She lived with her aunt, who, despite her own struggles, provided a loving home for Fauzia and her siblings. Despite the hardships she faced, Fauzia excelled academically, consistently ranking at the top of her class. But her ambitions extended beyond her own success; she was passionate about ensuring that all girls in her community had the opportunity to complete their education.
Her aunt, a respected figure in the Namelok Ladies group, was instrumental in Fauzia’s life. The group, known for making soap and washable menstrual pads, not only provided income for the family but also instilled a sense of community and support.
However, just as Fauzia was preparing for her exams to qualify for high school, tragedy struck in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. School closures left many young people idle, including Fauzia, who found temporary employment in a farming business that had entered her community. What seemed like a relief quickly turned into a nightmare when Fauzia found herself in a vulnerable situation.
Courageously, Fauzia fled back to her aunt, who, upon learning of the ordeal, took swift action. Fauzia received medical care and support, revealing that she was pregnant. Despite the challenges she faced, Fauzia remained undeterred in her pursuit of education. When school resumed, she returned, determined to sit for her exams.
Even amidst the trials of pregnancy and motherhood, Fauzia persevered, performing admirably in her studies. With the support of Foothold, a committed sponsor covering her school fees, Fauzia continued her education. It’s through the generosity of sponsors like these that girls like Fauzia can defy the odds and realize their dreams.
Today, Fauzia is on the brink of a significant milestone. In December of 2024, she will graduate from high school, a testament to her resilience and unwavering commitment to her education. Her journey serves as a reminder of the transformative power of education and the importance of supporting young women like Fauzia in their pursuit of a brighter future.
For just $45 a month, you can join us in empowering girls like Fauzia to overcome adversity and achieve their dreams. Together, we can make the impossible possible and ensure that every girl has the opportunity to shine. Let’s stand with Fauzia and girls like her as they write the next chapter of their lives, filled with hope, opportunity, and endless possibilities.
Pictured above, our Namelok ladies group celebrate the opening of a clean water well along with the community around St. Norbert’s Primary School. This well will serve to provide clean drinking water to primary school students and the surrounding community. Because of the capacity of the well along with the rehabilitation of a massive water tank on site, this well will be a source for irrigation, providing the school the ability to grow crops to feed the children at school.
While the public schools receive some government funding to provide food to these children, it typically lasts for about a fourth of the year. When food supplies run out, the school staff must resort to sending the children home for lunch. Most of children opt to stay at school, knowing the trip home will be fruitless, they choose to stay at school and conserve their energy.
We will be updating you as the irrigation construction and farming begins. In the meantime, providing water to these children during the day as well as allowing them to carry water home is just another incentive for them to come to school!
One of the exciting aspects of this project was discovering that the massive water storage tank built in the 1940s during the colonial farming era where sisal plantations once flourished, was actually viable with some rehabilitation. The rehabilitation cost as much as it would have originally cost to purchase a water storage tank, one that would have been plastic, so it would have lasted about five years with a capacity of about a tenth of what this concrete storage container can! It’s also incredibly exciting for us when we get to see the use and rehab of local resources that were once colonial-era now be used to serve children and local communities, and it looks much more attractive!
Another aspect of this story is the redemption of a well-intended project gone bad. About five years ago another organization drilled a well on the primary school site. It provided clean water for a couple years to the school and community. Unfortunately it was not drilled properly, so it began to collapse and ceased to provide any water. This was not only an unfortunate waste of resources but it was became a serious danger to the students because they could easily fall into the well.
The drilling and construction of this well included the filling in and securing the safety of this hazard. Foothold also made sure that the construction of the well was done according to guidelines to insure that it would be safe and secure for the workers drilling it and have structural integrity to last for generations.
One of the reasons Foothold chose this particular school is because of our long-standing relationship. We have been working with this school for over seven years working with them on sexual abuse prevention, reproductive health, providing soap and hygiene education. We’ve been impressed over the years how this school has strived to reach the Maasai community as this particular community has the historically had the lowest rates of school attendance. We have observed each initiative has increased overall enrollment, attendance, and test scores especially among the Maasai. Every one of these interventions makes sending their children to school more appealing to them. These trends quickly become contagious as the school earns the trust of respected families among the Maasai people.
Prior to this, the dry seasons were very difficult for families, especially women and children, who often travel up to 8 miles per day to fetch water. Instead these women and children are coming to their local public school, opening opportunities for families to become familiar with the staff, to see children enjoying their education, etc. This just creates more positive interactions among the community and the school.
This project was funded through a special peer-to-peer fundraising campaign called Kilimanjaro4Water. Cherie Catron climbed Kilimanjaro in the fall of 2021 along with Chelsey Bolles and Kalyn McGraw. All three of these women paid for their travel and climb expenses and used the climb as an opportunity to create awareness and raise funds. Along with these three women, over 25 people and businesses sponsored them through peer fundraising campaigns.
Cherie Catron will be climbing Kilimanjaro in September of 2022 along with her husband Brad Catron and their son, David Masters. If you are interested in climbing with them and/or hosting a peer campaign to help Foothold provide more clean water, contact Cherie at [email protected]. You can also follow her story on social media under the hastag #kilimanjaro4water.
Foothold faced a new challenge threatening our ongoing projects in rural Kenya. In late March, Kenyan schools shut down in response to Covid-19. Our three groups in Kenya making soap for their public schools with support from Pacha Soap Co. contacted us right away to ask how they should respond.
Honestly, our focus was on the immediate food crisis on the ground, so we told them to pause for a few days for us to contact Pacha Soap Co. and formulate a thoughtful response as we gathered information on the ground.
Within a few days, we received word that local school leaders reached out to all three groups to request we assist them in providing soap.
Teachers, administrators and community leaders stepped up to help deliver soap, concerned their students were at home and more than ever needed soap to help prevent the spread of Covid-19
As part of our soap partnership, the community agreed to protect the school soap. Our groups make the school soap a distinct purple color that if seen in someone’s home gets reported to local officials to address. However, under the circumstances because we were so encouraged by their desire to help and volunteer their time, it was an easy decision to make an exception and pivot our outreach to their homes.
Each of our groups jumped into action, working with school and community leaders to deliver the soap in the homes and at water sources. Foothold took this as an opportunity to provide washable menstrual pads, handmade masks, and food staples that were desperately needed.
An added benefit to this community response was that soap was provided to young Maasai boys who have not been allowed to attend school. One of those boys, Saidimu Lekimani, is pictured. He attended our adult education program we launched in January of this year because he has to tend cattle for his family during the day, but he wanted to learn to read and write.
Because of our work with the Maasai community in the area, Maasai men were also eager to receive the handmade masks and to learn about hand washing hygiene. Reaching these largely illiterate Maasai men to help sensitize and educate them is one of Foothold’s most challenging goals.
Jennifer Moses, one of our young leaders of the women’s group in Njoro took the initiative to meet children at the local spring, instructing them on hand washing hygiene.
We are incredibly grateful for our ongoing partnership with Pacha Soap Co. that has just proven more critical during this time.
Every day there is something to remember, something to try to write about if you have the time.
Yesterday Charity sent me on an errand. Her piki piki (motorcycle taxi), a sweet man named Andre in his early 60s took me into town. First stop at the internet café for printing documents.
On the way we get a call from Charity, and she needs zippers, which they call “zips.” Andre takes me to the sewing material shop, and I quickly realize he’s going to need to handle this transaction because Charity has given him precise directions in Swahili that I would definitely bungle. Fortunately, the shop is across from the Java Internet Café.
Andre is her steady taxi on retainer for a reason—he loves to help, and he dismounts the bike and jumps right into the shop to engage in motor speed negotiations with the clerk before I can even ask for help.
I don’t understand much of what is being said, but I know the general context, and it seems he’s got it covered. So, this Mzungu (the name they call white people here) is standing outside the shop in the middle of town, drawing some attention. I hear “Mzungu” in whispered gasps behind me by small children as they cover their mouths as if they have seen an alien. Others make mocking sounds meant to sound like an Asian dialect. They think I’m Chinese, maybe on account of my dark hair.
In reality it’s much less demeaning than it sounds. Children treat us like they do celebrities all on account of the lack of melanin in my skin. Other kids are more bold, yelling out “How are you?” emphasizing the you, and giggling so uncontrollably they can’t hear my response.
I have this really snarky response planned, “Jina langu si Mzungu. Jina langu ni Cherie.” Which basically translates, “My name is Cherie, not white lady.” I usually have to have Charity say it to them because they just can’t get their head around the fact that a white lady is speaking to them in Swahili, and well, it just blows their mind so much they can’t understand me, no matter how perfect my Swahili.
For those of you in mental health or education you know this is more than a smart aleck response. It’s an exercise in empathy, an attempt to challenge these children to also see past labels and stereotypes to our shared humanity.
When they listen, and this often only works with children I see repeatedly, they learn my name. Cherie is a hard one here and at home. Like many kindergarten students back home, my name usually sounds more like, “Shelly,” which sounds so sweet, I’ve almost decided to change my name officially.
For some reason zips are taking a while because everything seems to take a while, and I smile politely and gesture a formal greeting of a half-hearted wave at those loitering. A nod and wave usually suits the uncomfortable situation without being rude. The brief acknowledgment allows us to stare in silence.
I divert my eyes from theirs and begin reading the storefront signs around me full of misspellings and delightful ironies such as the “Tweeters” sign on the Cyber Café wall meant to notify customers that they could use Twitter at the Java Cyber Café. Also funny to me because the internet café doesn’t serve coffee or any other food for that matter, but it does a heck of a job printing in color for a mere 15 shillings per sheet.
I’m all settled in to my mild dissociation when a deep, hollow voice jars me from my daydreams.
“Hello, and where are you from?” spoken in a perfect British dialect that sounds both out of place and overly confident for a man sitting in a plastic chair loitering in front of the sewing shop.
His introduction is both disarming and intimidating. Andre is still haggling, waving the zips with enthusiasm and pointing to the inventory behind the counter, so I might as well entertain this conversation. The alternative could get ugly, insulting a man I have to continue to share a small space for the next 10-20 minutes.
“I’m from America,” I reply offering as little information as possible. I’m sure he can already figure that out by my accent, my obnoxiously bulky, ugly Asics and other things sufficiently awkward and out of place.
“Of course,” I mean which state?” In the midst of a loud, chaotic space, he sounds like he’s talking to me from a bar in a James Bond movie.
“I’m from Ohio,” I’m not being rude giving him this short response, but I am intentionally being vague. I learned a long time ago not to brag about Foothold to strangers here, which takes some restraint, but it has also become a bad habit hard to break when fundraising back in the US.
I can tell he’s annoyed, not getting the information he wants. He pauses, and leans towards me, “So what exactly are you doing here?”
I stand unmoved in part to avoid giving him the slightest hint that he’s getting to me, and there’s little room before I trip and fall off the crowded storefront step.
This is the big question I am in fact trying to avoid, of course. I’m on a visitor’s visa, so I have to be careful with the words I use. I can’t say the word “work,” so I explain that I’m a “board member, visiting our projects” which is the line stamped in my visa application, a line I’ve rehearsed, yet it still opens me up for more questions…
“Oh I see… you’re here with an NGO.”
Dang it, I think to myself, Not exactly because being an NGO is a complex and costly label that we’ve been advised not to use here.
“We’re a charitable business,” I correct him, still trying to be short and vague, but knowing full well I’m getting sucked in, hoping to stall long enough for Andre to finish with the dang zips!
At which point Andre miraculously interrupts and shows me the zips that are unfortunately missing vital parts. I tell Andre what needs correcting, and that gives me a little diversion but prompts the stranger to get to his point, knowing we’re about to finish this transaction and leave.
He takes a breath, “So…” again he pauses, “let me tell you about what I do…” with this he rambles about mentoring youth and “doing projects” (everyone says they do this stuff to Americans), “So how do I, let’s say,” he pauses rubs his chin, “You know,” he flicks his wrist, “get money from white people in America?”
I am giggling on the inside at his question for so many reasons. I try to respond by saying honestly in my head…
I don’t know, buddy! I’m trying to figure out the same thing! Especially after visiting Ur’kungu school where the only water available is 8km, and it’s too salty to drink! They need a well, which is going to cost thousands of dollars that we definitely don’t have in our budget, yea, so when I figure that out I’ll make sure you’re the first to know! Right, because you’re a total stranger, but I’m sure you deserve white people’s money just as much as we do!
But none of that comes out of my mouth. Instead I take a deep breath. Whatever I muttered or offered nonverbally, he moved on to his next request.
“You know white people in America are such good people. I want to go there. If you wrote me a letter of invitation, I’m sure I’d be allowed to go there.”
And with this I unload, “You know not all Americans are nice people. As a matter of fact, we’re not even close to being as friendly or as hospitable as Kenyans. Good luck. I could write you the most perfect letter, and they won’t let you come. You’ve see the news right, our country has a policy now about this. Our government isn’t exactly friendly to foreigners!” And I know I’ve gone overboard.
Go ahead roll your own eyes, shake your head, but please don’t lecture me. I know what I’ve done here, and I am in fact human.
He laughs a deep chuckle and mutters something about Donald Trump and his “sh-hole countries” comments.
So I apologize. I tell him he would have much better luck visiting Canada. I’m being sincere. One of our best friends here in Kenya has tried for years to come to the US with all the letters and every good and pure intention, but was able to easily travel to Canada this past year. I tell him that, and he nods, I believe in understanding. I wish him luck. I pretend to try to remember the website he quotes me about his project.
Andre comes running out of the shop and almost knocks me off the step in his enthusiasm. I inspect the zips again, shake the stranger’s hand politely and give him that sympathetic nod.
“I’ll let you know when I find the secret to getting white people’s money,” and I’m hopping on the back of the motorcycle, headed to my next stop.