Monday afternoon, I had the privilege of connecting with
some incredible students at a high school in Fairmont, WV. Last year, students
at this school, led a first time initiative on their campus and a first time
initiative for any group anywhere. They organized an entire week of activities
on their campus to raise funds and awareness for Nuru’s work. The video above
tells a little bit of the story of their exploits.
So Monday evening I found out that the Nuru club that
started on their campus last year had grown from about 6 dedicated people to 15
folks. They are planning to blow the goals from last year out of the water, and
coming up with all kinds of crazy cool ideas to inspire others to join in this
work.
Any time with around people who are getting engaged with
this issue, I get fired up. Especially when it is young people. This problem is
so huge that it is going to require all hands on deck, and I believe that part
of the key to ending extreme poverty is having people get a vision for taking
action, and dedicating their careers toward making a lasting impact toward
improving our world.
I think many students at Fairmont Senior High School are
well on their way, and it is my hope that other schools will continue to build
on their success, and help bring lasting change to the people of Kuria, Kenya
and beyond.
Four years ago, there was a small group of us who had a big
idea. It was about ending extreme poverty. We had come from various careers and
walks of life because we believed that global extreme poverty is the greatest
humanitarian crisis of our generation, and that future generations would judge
us based on what we did or did not do about this issue. We joined together,
friends linked with a common vision, a vision that was birthed into reality by
Jake Harriman and John Hancox. A vision that is now reality, a reality that has
brought thousands of people around the world together to make lasting change in
ending extreme poverty.
Four years ago we took this big idea to Kuria West, a
district in the Nyanza province of Kenya, and one of the poorest communities in
the country. We began by listening as farmers told us about chronic hunger in
their families because they couldn’t produce enough food to eat. They told us
of their own lack of ability to budget and save, and of the challenges of
trying to pay school fees or just surviving as they and their family had
sickness as a regular part of their lives as a result of malnutrition, unclean
water, and malaria among other challenges.
Since that time Nuru has been able to help literally
thousands of people in Kuria West to begin charting a new future. Children are
able to go to school, families can produce more than enough food to eat, people
are able to save, budget, and even purchase life saving tools like malaria
nets, water purification technology, and soap. Lives are being saved, and a new
pathway and future is being created for this community.
But that is just part of the story. There are incredible
leaders who are emerging in the community in Kenya who are helping Nuru’s programs
expand, and who will one day take these programs to new districts in Kenya.
There are revenue generating activities that are taking place that will make
this endeavor financially sustainable in the long term as well.
And all of this is because a number of people from around
the world have chosen to be part of this vision. From Alaska to Switzerland and
from Kenya to Australia. Individuals are choosing not to accept the way things
are but are instead working to chart a different future. A future where people
have clean water to drink, food to eat, improved health, savings, and improved
education. People are choosing to be light and hope.
Here in the US, churches, students, individuals,
corporations, and more are choosing to be light and hope. They are choosing
action over apathy, and they are part of changing thousands of lives.
Just last month, my wife and I traveled to Kuria and heard
people tell their stories. We saw the results of an amazing maize harvest, and we met
children who will grow up not knowing the desperation of extreme poverty. They will not know hunger. They will have a life filled with even greater opportunities than their parents could have previously imagined.
I’m
in awe of what has been accomplished in the last four years, and I’m
excited to celebrate a big idea becoming reality, together with you, one
community at a time. I can’t wait to see
what the future has for the people of Kuria West, Kenya and beyond. May we
never grow weary of doing good, and helping our global neighbors take steps to
improve their lives forever. And may we each be part of bringing lasting change to this world.
Back in February, I had the privilege to witness a first in the short history of Nuru International. I visited a high school in north central West Virginia that had organized an entire week of events dedicated to raising awareness about Nuru’s work as well as raising funds to further our efforts on the ground in Kuria, Kenya. To my knowledge this is the first time a school anywhere in the country has dedicated an entire week to ‘being Nuru’ and, as a West Virginian, it makes me extremely proud to know that this school is in my home state of West Virginia.
Over the course of the week, students organized a variety of activities to raise funds and to ‘be light’ on their campus. (Nuru is a kiswahili word that means light and has a connotation of hope.) The week started with me visiting the school for an all school assembly to talk to students about the issue of etreme poverty, what Nuru does, Nuru's West Virginia roots, and how young people just like them are getting in the fight to end extreme poverty together with Nuru. That same day, students and faculty were encouraged to wear their “We Bears Do Care” Nuru Club T-shirts, and wrote statistics on clothes pins and pinned these to one another to raise awareness around the school about global extreme poverty. The week progressed with students being able to buy glow in the dark bracelets, raise funds to participate in a ‘bucket walk’ , and culminated last Saturday with a 5K race on the campus of Fairmont State University.
To me, one of the most amazing aspects of the week was the fact that it was largely coordinated through the efforts of one teacher and a handful of students. Mrs. Adrin Fisher, an English teacher (and also a past graduate of Fairmont Senior High School and West Virginia University), helped her students form a club, get permission for the events of the week, and mentored them along the way. As a result of their efforts, more and more students and teachers began getting involved with the events of the week, and together they had a massive impact.
Over the course of the week, over 200 people joined Nuru International’s fan page on Facebook, and these students together raised over $2700 to support Nuru’s work on the ground in Kuria Kenya. I am so proud of these young people. As Mrs. Fisher noted, too often, young people from small town America are discouraged from believing they can do something really significant to make a difference in this world. The fact that Nuru was started by Jake Harriman, a person from rural Appalachia (Preston County, West Virginia), really resonated with the students and served as an example that they also could step up and make a significant impact on our world.
I hope other schools around this state, country, and world, will follow the example of these students, and organize their own unique events and fundraisers to inspire even more people to join us in this fight so that one day, we can say that together we were the generation who ended extreme poverty, and helped people everywhere have choices and the opportunity to determine their future.
