Hope Factory Inc

This year, the hope factory enabled kiwanda cha tumaini to purchase the school compound we had leased for several years. We continue to provide support for veritas christian academy, offering a quality classical christian education for pre-primary through class 6. The required kenyan curriculum is supplemented with excellent resources provided by the rafiki foundation. The teaching staff is provided with continuing education and training, enabling each of them to reach the highest certification level desired. A trained and highly-skilled staff prepares and serves two nutritious meals each day, consisting of a well-balanced and varied menu, including fruit servings for each student and staff member. In addition to the school's academic focus, which includes swahili and english, daily bible study for teachers, students and staff includes hymn singing and devotionals. Three of our students, brothers in classes 6, 5, and 3, were abandoned by their single mother. We were able to establish a 'rescue' home for them and provide parent figures to supervise the household. The 'house mother' we hired is a licensed and certified counselor and does double-duty as our school admin person. The boys slept on beds for the first time in their lives and are loved and well-fed.

Our farm has flourished over the past year! In the spring and early summer, we undertook the planting of 510 banana plants of 5 different varieties. What we have now is an established banana plantation, providing sweet bananas and cooking bananas to our school on a daily basis. In addition, we have grown and harvested acres of sweet potatoes, as well as beans, watermelon, canteloupe, cucumbers, peanuts, carrots, cabbage, peas, mango, avocado, irish potatoes, and many other local vegetables. We built animal enclosures to house two milk cows, 8 goats, 27 rabbits at last count, and a large flock of layer hens. We built seven pits for the collection and processing of manure and urine for fertilizer, in addition to a storage area for feed and the napier and bracharia grass we are growing. We were finally able to bring electricity to the farm and are currently working to provide lines where needed on the farm. We are also developing plans to pump water from the river for irrigation purposes.