ARCHIVES: FOR THE GOOD NEWS
Learn more about our work in recent years through a selection of archived newsletters below.
NOVEMBER 2024: GIVING TUESDAY
"Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end."- Scott Adams
Your generosity changed countless lives this past year. It helped build classrooms, support teachers, enroll hundreds of out-of-school children and ensure that hundreds of girls were able to attend classes all month long thanks to reusable pads and health education. If you have given in 2024, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you have yet to give, we hope you'll join us this GivingTuesday on our journey to expand access to education for girls in Kenya.
Giving starts with our hearts; thank you for caring. We remain eternally grateful for your belief, investment and support of our work and mission. Working together, we can create opportunity for girls for a lifetime!
SEPTEMBER 2024: UPDATE FROM THE FIELD
"Last October, when we met, I did not believe it was possible to build a classroom by selling goats. But now we see how quickly it could become a reality. 2024 truly did become our ‘Year of Wonders.’” - Mayor of Leshuta, Kenya.
Our September newsletter shares updates on our August, 2024 trip to Kenya, which was full of of celebration, new challenges, and much beauty. We started with a ceremony marking the new day secondary school in the village of Leshuta and closed with a three-day community designed to provide the space and time for the people of Loita to come together to define their own vision for their future and create guard rails to ensure their land isn’t sold off during a process of foundational changes in ownership currently affecting lands they have communally shared for over a century. In between, we held a five-day training in Participatory Video with our staff and met with girls to listen to their struggles and their hopes for a brighter future.
None of this work would have been possible without the caring of all of you, our incredible community of supporters. Read more about the difference your generosity made in Kenya this summer through this link.
APRIL 2024: UPDATE FROM THE FIELD
"Change happens best where there is patience and perseverence…. We should not give up easily. Change is possible, but it takes time and understanding."– For the Good Naikarra Supervisor Christine Mpoe
Our April newsletter shares the faces and stories of many of our new Team Angaza interns, an update on our secondary schools, a map showing new partner schools in Kenya’s Naikarra region, and our 2023 Annual Report, which shares the voices of the many committed, intelligent and caring people who are dedicating their lives and resources to creating a better world for girls in Kenya. We hope you enjoy reading their insights and stories. All of the change we’ve created described within this report would not have been possible without the support of all of you – the caring community of people who support our work.
JANUARY 2024: 2023 IN REVIEW
"Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us."– Hal Borland
Our January newsletter shares an overview of our impact in 2023, which includes completion of seven new classrooms, expansion of our work into the adjoining region of Naikarra, and enrollment of hundreds more children into primary schools by our dedicated Team Angaza interns. None of these accomplishments would have happened without the support of all of you – the incredible community of people who support our work. Click for full article.
DECEMBER 2023: GIVING TUESDAY UPDATE
Our December newsletter shares our 2023 GivingTuesday effort. Thanks to the generosity and caring of our community of supporters, we raised just over $52,000 this year. These dollars will help us more confidently scale our work to the remote region of Naikarra and Olderkesi in 2024, ensuring that many, many hundreds more girls get the chance to go to school. Our heartfelt gratitude to every person who donated or spread the word about our work this year. We remain ever humbled by the continued belief and investment of our supporters in our work. Together, we are creating lasting change for countless young lives.
SEPTEMBER 2023: UPDATE FROM THE FIELD
Our September newsletter shares the joyful official opening ceremony of Olmesutie’s day school, which we were able to share with several funders in the U.S. who were key to making that school a reality. It also shares several sweet photos from our Intern Coordinator, Christine Mpoe’s recent wedding, to her childhood friend Joseph Shura; information about the powerful work that conservation organizations are doing to support women in conservation and the collective work that the organization Together Women Rise is doing to raise awareness of and support organizations working to increase gender equity around the world. Read more through this link!
JUNE 2023: UPDATE FROM THE FIELD + CLASSY AWARDS
Our June newsletter shares an update on the incredible progress the community of Olmesutie is making towards completion of their day secondary school, plus a new tree planting sustainability effort we’re initiating with our partner communties in Kenya. Our June newsletter also shares information on our recent selection as a finalist in the 2023 Classy Awards, an honor we humbly share with some of our own early nonprofit heros including Days for Girls, The Fistula Foundation, and Hope for Haiti.
APRIL 2023: 2022 ANNUAL REPORT, PRESS, AND A FIELD UPDATE
Our April newsletter shares our 2022 Annual Report, a Mountain Women magazine article featuring Executive Director Kayce Anderson and our work in Kenya, and an update from a recent trip to Kenya, during which Kayce, her daughter Blu and several of our longtime young ambassadors were able to to celebrate with the village of Mausa as they dedicated the opening of three new classrooms at the new Mausa Day Secondary School and visit a new region where we’ve begun expanding our work to in 2023- Olderkesi.
Thousands of people came on foot from all over to the Mausa school opening, wearing their finest Maasai shukas and beadwork. The regional Member of Parliament (MP) flew in by helicopter to attend, unexpectedly signing deeply generous checks to the head teacher to help finish both Mausa’s final secondary classrooms and rebuild their primary school, which had been burnt down in 2007. Read more about this school opening in our Update from the Field through this link.
JANUARY 2023: THANKS TO YOU….2023 IN REVIEW
"Let our New Year's resolution be this: we will be
there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word."-Göran Persson, former Swedish Prime Minister.
We found much to be grateful for in the Loita Hills last year. The many moments of utter beauty, joy, and progress we experienced give us hope for the future, and each challenge we wrestled with taught us something new. While those struggles often felt daunting and discouraging in the moment, they ultimately help make our work in Kenya wiser and make us more resilient as an organization.
Below are a few of the highlights we experienced in 2022. None of them would have happened without the support of all of you – the incredible community of people who support similarly incredible Click for full article
DECEMBER 2022: GIVING TUESDAY UPDATE
Our December newsletter shares an update on our 2022 GivingTuesday effort. Thanks to the generosity and caring of our community of supporters, we raised just over $51,000 this year. The dollars you donated will ensure our core programs get off to a powerful start in 2023. We are truly grateful to every single person who donated, helped spread the word or came out to support our work in other ways. We continue to be humbled by your ongoing support of, belief in, and investment in our work. To read more, click here for the full article.
Portrait of Najma, the day before starting 10th grade. Photo: Kate Lapides-Black, 2022.
OCTOBER 2022: IT TAKES A VILLAGE….
It takes a village to raise a child, says a well-known African proverb. We believe it also takes a village to create most kinds of meaningful change, including improving access to education for girls around the world. Today, October 11, on the 10th anniversary of the United Nation's International Day of the Girl Child, we celebrate the new opportunities many Maasai girls now have in the Loita Hills. Thanks to the village of support we receive from all of you, our staff in Kenya have enrolled over 600 students into primary schools since they reopened in 2021–– and continue to follow up with their families to ensure they can stay in the classroom. And thanks to four new secondary schools you've helped us launch with the past two years, these students will Click for full article
Meeting with community elders in Oltarakua, April, 2022. Photo: Kate Lapides-Black.
JUNE 2022 UPDATE FROM THE FIELD: WALKING WITH COMMUNITIES
Recently, in our annual report, we wrote how community work is like a dance: Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow, sometimes you step on toes, and occasionally, experience flow states of beautiful synchrony. Our recent trip to Kenya illustrated just how apt those words can be. We had a vehicle breakdown that left us stranded in the middle of the night and torrential evening rains that resulted in impassable roads. Our greatest disappointment came at learning of a new government policy that increases the economic barrier to starting new schools.
Gratefully, most of these closed doors led to a valuable new opportunity. The roads that were impassable to our small van meant we had to hire Mompashi (Mike); one of two local Click for full article
MARCH 2022: THE IMPACT YOU MADE - OUR 2021 ANNUAL REPORT
The pages of our 2021 annual report paint a picture of years of work beginning to bear fruit. Please don’t take it as trite when we say that this success is in large part because of you. It is your support that has ensured we can set community programs into motion that are sparking real change in rural Kenya. Because of that fact, we hope that you take as much pride in the progress represented on these pages as we do.
Community work is marked by sprints when the times are right, and slow walks when the communities are wounded. In this report, you’ll read about the dramatic positive impact that our enrollment and secondary schools have had on girls’ (and boys’) lives in Kenya. At the same time, the region where we work is currently experiencing significant challenges due to drought followed by Click for full article
Irene shares a light moment with her aunt during chores. Photo: Ami Vitale, 2021
JANUARY 2022: 2021 IN REVIEW, LOOKING AHEAD TO 2022
"Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.” -Hal Borland
In the continued struggle of life at the margin, there was much to be grateful for last year in the Loita Hills. For the communities, schools and markets reopened. For our organization, we were able to pick up our pre-COVID programming to enroll children into school and open secondary schools, with new and valuable insights gained during COVID. We feel enormous gratitude for many moments of beauty, joy, and hope as well as our struggles, for they have made us stronger. Click for full article
Portrait of Irene at home, 2021. Photo: Ami Vitale
DECEMBER 2021: THANKS TO YOU, WE DID IT!
Thanks to you...
We raised over $52,000 on GivingTuesday last week thanks to your generous support combined with a 100% Match from a Foundation partner! The dollars you donated will provide a solid foundation for our core programs for the first half of 2022. We're so very grateful to everyone who gave and came out to support our work in countless ways. We continue to be humbled by your ongoing support of, belief in, and investment in our work. To our many new supporters, we'd like to extend a genuine welcome Click for full article
SEPTEMBER 2021: $50K THANKS TO YOU!
Our original goal for our September 2021 $28K for 28KM Campaign was to raise $28,000 - enough to open two new secondary schools in Kenya’s Loita Hills. Thanks to all of you, we ended up raising just shy of $50,000 - an amount that will go a very long way towards opening a third high school in this remote, 650-square-mile region. We’re humbled beyond belief by your support.
These funds will allow us to begin the work needed to open day secondary schools in the villages of Olorte, Entasekera, and Mausa. They’ll also help continue work on our other core programs to enroll children in school and support schools with teacher grants and enhanced learning materials to ensure that the education students receive is high quality. Click for full article
MAY 2021: NEW STAFF; NEW PROGRAMS
It has been said that something as small as a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon half way around the world." –– Chaos Theory
In 2020, you helped reconnect nearly 400 hundred students in remote Maasai communities to their education during COVID-school closures by funding the launch of an offline learning program using tablets and an app called Kolibri. Due to the overwhelmingly positive reception from teachers and students to this tablet program, we're now working to scale this new digital learning opportunity to some of the most marginalized villages in the Loita Hills this year though the expansion of our intern and program staff in Kenya.
This talented new crew is helping us enroll even more children into primary school and continue our work to open what will become just the 2nd and 3rd affordable day secondary schools across the entire 646-square-mile region of the Loita Hills, opening up new opportunities for hundreds of young Maasai. Click for full article.
FEBRUARY 2021: THANKS TO YOU….
In the summer of 2020, you helped reconnect hundreds of students in remote Maasai communities to their education by funding the launch of an offline learning program, Kolibri, that allowed them to continue to study during COVID school closures. The program became a lifeline that kept young Maasai students connected to school and learning.
Key Impacts of this Program over the summer and fall of 2020:
363 students from 17 different schools were connected to remote digital lessons via intensive outreach efforts by our Kenyan staff. Our team worked 12-hour days crisscrossing the 646-square mile remote Loita Hills region by foot and motorbike on muddy roads to deliver tablets to teachers and students and instruct them in their use.
From June through October, our staff repeated this intensive outreach effort monthly in order to load new curriculum onto students' tablets. Not only did they receive the Kenya standard curriculum, we also filled the tablets with interactive STEAM, literacy, Click for full article
AUGUST 2020: COVID PROGRAM UPDATE
Still Learning....Thanks to You
"I must sincerely thank you for coming up with this program allowing students to continue learning at home. From the start it must have looked like a dream –– but now it has become a reality in our villages. Your staff (Programs Coordinator Josephat Mashati) risked his life crisscrossing the whole of Loita instead of staying at home during this time to make sure that every child in Loita gets the content, traveling through odd hours to beat the curfews and through bad weather when it was raining across our bad roads. The entire Loita leadership and parents can proudly say we now have a caring partner helping us... for the Good".
- Gedion Koyie, District School Administrator, Loita
Gedion wrote these words last week to thank us; we feel they also belong to you. In June, our supporters raised the funds to launch a pilot offline learning program that is now serving over 300 students in the Loita Hills, keeping them connected Click for full article
JUNE 2020: BONUS DAY AT GLOBAL GIVING!
For the Good is working intensely to scale our COVID-19 Remote Education response in Kenya before the school term ends. Joining this effort through our Global Giving Page any time between June 8 - June 26 can help connect hundreds more Maasai students to remote learning. A GIFT TODAY, JUNE 17, can be especially impactful by creating the potential for bonuses from Global Giving.
Our work is only possible thanks to the generous people who invest with us to increase opportunity for girls in Kenya. On behalf of hundreds of students, we can't thank you enough for becoming part of the extraordinary group of changemakers making a difference in the lives of thousands of Kenyan girls.
APRIL 2020: JOINING TOGETHER IN UNCERTAINTY
It's hard to believe how much the world has changed in the past two months with the exponential global spread of the coronavirus. Kenya, like countries everywhere, is bracing for its impact. As staff experience the fear of facing these deep uncertainties here in the US, we are deeply cognizant that these are exponentially heightened in remote regions of the world with significantly fewer resources than our own.
Our work in Kenya is focused on education; our role in helping our communities navigate this challenge isn’t yet clear. We operate in semi-arid landscapes where food security and schooling are closely intertwined, especially for pastoralist families who must migrate with livestock during times of drought or other scarcity. Additionally, critical interventions of hand washing and sanitation are challenging in regions where 80% of the population relies on lakes, streams Click for full article
FEBRUARY 2020: NEW SCHOOLS FOR A NEW YEAR:
Last month, for the first time, eight young Maasai girls - one pregnant, one already a young teenage mother - and ten boys started their lessons in the first affordable day secondary school across a 400-square-mile region of the Loita Hills in southern Kenya. The school was envisioned and launched by the parents, teachers, school committees, elders, and government administrators of the community of Morijo in partnership with For the Good. Click for full article
DECEMBER, 2019: IN GRATITUDE
We are grateful for you. In 2019 your gift changed lives. Your dollars:
• Expanded For the Good's work to Maasai communities where historically only six out of 100 girls attended school past 8th grade.
• Launched the first day secondary school in this area, the only affordable option for high school over a 400-square-mile region. Eight girls will enter 9th grade here when its doors open in the new term in January. As more girls move through primary school
in nearby communities, hundreds will have their first chance to continue their educations after primary school, thanks to your support.
• Created a community volunteer program that is now empowering young adults with opportunities to grow professional skills in facilitation, public speaking and community development, with opportunities to get certificates that can launch their careers.
On behalf of thousands of girls that benefit from your generosity, we are endlessly grateful.