poverty

Josephs’ House Students Share Creativity and Leadership with our Summer Visitors

kellyUncategorized

This past summer we had several visitors meeting our students and taking a tour of the communities where we work.  Our Joseph’s House students took the opportunity to give back to Light Up Hope by both learning from our visitors and teaching them as well.  Mike and Liz Ruggles were the “Win a Trip to Kenya” winners from our 2018 Light Up Hope Gala.  They spent 10 days with us in Kenya and since Mike is a professional photographer, he choose to share his knowledge of photography and entrepreneurship with our students.  He taught them about photo composition, lighting and business techniques for starting a photography business.  He was such an inspiration, several of our students have started their own small businesses doing portraits for their fellow university students! When the Discovery Church mission team arrived, it was time for our students to take the lead.  They brought the team on a tour of downtown Nairobi including Uhuru Park where they taught the mission trip members the joy of dance and singing and the Masai Market where they taught the mission team the skill of price negotiation! We have 4 students expected to graduate in the next twelve months and we […]

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165 High School Girls Join Light Up Hope through Seeds of Change

kellyUncategorized

I’m very happy to share that Light Up Hope is working in collaboration with Seeds of Change Foundation from Sioux Falls, SD to sponsor the high school education of 165 girls from impoverished backgrounds across Kenya. We first started working with Seeds of Change in 2018 when they began by sponsoring one of our Joseph’s House students, Mary, and later in the year, added two additional girls for university. Since the beginning of 2019 we have been working together in preparation to add these high school students to our Light Up Hope program with funding through Seeds of Change. The girls who are joining the program have been sponsored by Seeds of Change since the start of their high school careers and we are grateful to Seeds of Change for giving us the opportunity to oversee and manage their high school careers from this point. The Light Up Hope staff has worked very hard and is continuing to work hard to ensure these girls success, including placing them in high quality government schools, purchasing new uniforms and all of the school supplies needed, as is traditional in our Light Up Hope High School Program. We are excited to see our […]

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Maureen’s family – Kwa Njenga LIFT community, June update

Candace BarlowKwa Njenga, Lift

What would it feel like to go without food for days and to also see your children going hungry? Maureen’s (pictured above, with her mother) family, who are supported by our LIFT program, deal with hunger every day in Kwa Njenga, a large urban slum in Nairobi. Sometimes, Maureen and her sister borrow food from the neighbors in order to have just one meal per day. The family also confronts a lack of clean water, the threat of theft (which is widespread in the slum), and poor dirt roads that become muddy in the rainy season. Maureen’s parents struggle to provide income for the family through causal (short-term) labor. Maureen’s mother has tried to improve the family’s situation by selling bread and porridge in the slum when she can. Her enterprising spirit helps to keep the family afloat and together. The family is grateful for LIFT funds, which have allowed them to send Maureen’s younger sister, Esther, to school and to purchase school uniforms for the girls. Education is one worry that they can cross off their long list. They still have a need for: food security, better health care, and funds for the mother to start a small business. […]

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I took my son to Kenya and he got malaria

kellyUncategorized

It took over a year for me to be ready to post this blog, but here it is, a memoire of  bringing my son, Sam, to experience the place and people we love and the sadness, fear and education we faced when he was infected with malaria. January 2015 The road is dry and dusty, so dusty that the leaves on the bushes that line the street are covered in red dirt and they look as if the bushes are dying.  Underneath the green peaks out and the orange and yellow flowers add confusion to the view.  The road is so bumpy that the van heaves back and forth under the strain of pot holes created during a time of great rain, now cemented into deep ruts in the road.  Cradled in my arms, with his head resting against a pillow to attempt to give him some comfort is my 8 year old son, Sam.  He has a fever again and he has barely eaten in two weeks.  This morning I negotiated with him to eat three Ritz crackers with peanut butter. He doesn’t want to eat, though he tells me if I had the ability to give him a cheeseburger […]

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Enter the Fight for Love Challenge

kellyUncategorized

Every child deserves love.  Every. Single. Child.  Children in the U.S. and children in Africa, every child around the world.  But for many children this love is taken from them. Taken by disease and tragedy, taken by abuse, taken by poverty.  Children find themselves alone in life without a family, without support for their hopes and dreams and feeling a deep hole in their hearts that should be filled with love. Every day at Light Up Hope we fight to provide love for these children.  We fight to keep families together through our LIFT program, we fight to bring healing to their fragile hearts through counseling, we fight to keep their hopes and dreams alive through education and empowerment programs.  We do this because we love them, and they deserve to know though life has taken so much love from them; we are in their corner, fighting to bring love back in. Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you ~ Loretta Young For the next four weeks we are issuing a challenge, a challenge to spread more love to the people around you.  Maybe you want to stand with us and help fuel our programs to […]

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