In Their Own Words

A Life Changed from ‘Worse to Good’

From when I was born up to when I joined Jitegemee, my life experience was very bad. Before I joined Jitegemee, I was in the streets just sniffing glue and also drinking alcohol. I could be arrested and taken to a police station at any time. There was no one who came to see me in the police station, so I sometimes stayed there for months. When I was about seven years old, I went to the city of Nairobi. I used to take other people’s property and run away.... [Read more]

Student Always in Top 20 of His Class

Years ago, primary education in Kenya was not free and mandatory. Many children from poor backgrounds were unable to receive an education. Many problems forced these children out of school—broken families, hunger, poverty, and lack of money to pay school fees. One of our sponsored children frequently hung out with a very jovial boy in tattered clothes. This boy, a smiling kid named Kivua Kiilu, appeared very comfortable in the streets. He did not have anywhere... [Read more]

No Longer Sniffing Glue & Abusing Drugs

Life has been hard right away from my childhood. I used to live with both of my parents. When I attained the age of six years, they took me to a nearby primary school, where I was enrolled in class one (1st grade). By then my father was a drunkard with no source of income and he was not able to pay my school fees. My mother worked as a casual laborer and with the little she earned, she bought us food and paid my fees. Sometimes when dad came home drunk, he... [Read more]

‘May God Bless the Jitegemee Program’

I remember some years back when I was not in the Jitegemee program. My life was very strange because I was not going to school and I was very bad behaved. Now when the Jitegemee program was started I joined St. Mary’s Girls Primary School. But when at first I joined the school my mother told me that I had no right to go to school and I deserve to stay at home. I was very angry and noted into my heart that I would not step in the school not even a single day.... [Read more]