Givology - give to learn, learn to give

Flying Kites hopes to double the size of its primary school, which houses the orphaned, critically poor, and high-performing students in Kenya's Central Highlands. This September, we will be launching our capital campaign to reach this goal, as we currently serve 70 children and will be expanding to serve approx. 180 boarders and day-scholars.

We need to raise 45,000 USD to purchase a farm. As we begin to plan for our campus expansion, we need to secure an additional three acres of land, adjacent to our current site. The new property will be used to construct additional classrooms in addition to hosting a large farm that will supplement much of the food needed for our school feeding program. This farm will help Flying Kites provide nutritious daily meals to 180 students, in a sustainable way. As we currently do on our first site, we plan to raise chickens, cows and rabbits

Adults who were malnourished as children earn at least 20% less, on average, than those who weren't.

The majority of children who come to live at our home have previously suffered from ill health and malnutrition, and early efforts to combat stunting require a holistic approach to intervention. As part of our commitment to health and sustainability, we cultivate large farms on both of our Njabini sites to provide fresh produce for our home and school. The children participate widely in both farms and enjoy caring for our chickens, sheep and rabbits. Our dairy initiative provides milk for both the students (and staff) at our school and home. Our cows are housed in a nongrazing unit, whereby their manure powers our kitchen through biogas technology, reducing our reliance on kerosene and firewood.

However, we have quickly grown-out of the farm we currently have on our school site (it is less than one third of an acre), and we need to be able to serve a greater number of children by securing more land.

We are actively fundraising to purchase a three-acre farm (connected to our current campus) in order to begin construction on our classrooms, as well as begin farming to provide immediate benefit to the students and community we serve.

Flying Kites has been in operation since 2007 and has served hundreds of students and families in need within the Kinangop region of Kenya. We currently run a home, school, and outreach program to serve 90 students. In addition, we recently developed our LaunchPad initiative to provide the teens in our programs with access to career training and life-skills.

180 orphaned and critically poor student (approximately 40 percent of the school's population will be boarding on-site, and the remaining will be students living in the Njabini village whose caregivers are critically-poor). At least 50 percent of our student population will remain female.

The Capital Campaign is being overseen by Leila Chambers (Executive Director), Wambui Kimani, our Country Director of 2 years who has a background in community development, having worked with several NGO's within Nairobi in her previous capacity as a forensic accountant. The planning of our construction is being conceived by Planning Kenya, Nairobi's leading architectural design team, who are celebrated nationally for their commitment to green energy and environmental conservation in design.