Our Mission
Our mission is to empower underprivileged and marginalized students in Machakos, Kenya, by providing holistic support in both academics and sports, enabling them to realize their potential and break the cycle of poverty.
We aim to prevent school dropouts and protect vulnerable youth from drug abuse and early marriages by offering education, mentorship, and opportunities that nurture resilience, discipline, and hope for a brighter future.
Our Vision
We envision a world where every vulnerable child has the opportunity to achieve their full potential through quality education, sports, and equal access to life-changing opportunities.
The Challenge, Our Response, Your Impact
Together, We Can Remove Barriers, Unlock Potential and Create a Brighter Future for the Children and Youth of Kenya
Rural Machakos, Kenya has a high percentage of families living below poverty, struggling to provide the most essential, basic needs for survival. For this reason, most nonprofit organizations in the area are helping address these needs by focusing on helping provide food and healthcare needs. We found there is a critical gap no one else is addressing, gifted and talented students who have great potential to break out of the cycle of poverty and help uplift their families and community are unable to do so due to lack of support and resources. Our goal is to fill this gap by providing resources and opportunities for these students to realize their full potential through academics and athletics.
Academic support strengthens the mind, while athletic support strengthens discipline, confidence, and resilience. This model helps students reach their full potential by nurturing talent, character, leadership, teamwork, and academic success simultaneously. We believe that by helping students excel both academically and athletically, doors of opportunities will open for them to be able to succeed in achieving their dreams and uplift their families and community by breaking the cycle of poverty.
We focus on low-cost, high-impact projects so you can get the highest return on your investment. Our projects have immediate, visible, and long-lasting impacts. We have both ongoing and one-time projects. Our ongoing projects address recurring needs, while our one-time projects are bigger, multi-year, multi-impact investments. For example, our sports complex project benefits every child, every grade level, every school year. Your contribution will help impact not only the current students but also future students and the community as a whole. You can visit our school partner site and point at the field and say, "I helped built that. Thousands of children will use it." You have the chance to help transform an entire school and uplift an entire community. Your contribution becomes more than a donation; it becomes part of a legacy.
Although public primary education is officially free in Kenya, students are required to pay school fees to attend public school. Families in rural Machakos, Kenya typically spend around 15,000 Ksh (approximately $115) per child per year on school fees. This doesn't include uniforms, school supplies and other school-related expenses required for attending school. For many households that rely on subsistence farming, seasonal labor, or informal employment, these expenses represent a substantial financial burden. During periods of drought, poor harvests, or economic hardship, families may struggle to meet even these relatively modest costs.
Students experience interruptions to their education when families are unable to afford to pay their school fees. Even short disruptions to school attendance can have lasting consequences. They miss out on learning important curriculum by being told to stay home until fees are paid causing these students to fall further behind each day they miss school. Reducing these financial barriers enable children to attend school consistently and participate fully in both academic and extracurricular activities.
We are fortunate in the United States to have access to tuition-free public K-12 education without worry that our children will be sent home and told they cannot learn with their peers because us, as parents cannot afford to pay for their supplies and needs. Students from low-income households are provided free breakfast and lunch at school and the government also provides money to purchase food outside of the school day. This is unimaginable for students in Kenya, where many go to school with an empty stomach and go through the whole school day without any food.
Help is needed everywhere in the world even in some districts here in USA. The most important thing we can do is to be greater than ourselves in helping the next generation of disadvantaged students, regardless of where they live. In Kenya, the money goes a lot further. To put that in context, the amount an average family of four spends on a dinner out at a restaurant in USA is about equivalent to school fees for a year for a primary school student in rural Kenya. For the amount it costs to do basic landscaping at a single-family home's backyard in the USA, a sports complex facility at a school in rural Kenya can be built. Any contribution, no matter the amount can make a big impact.
Kenya's Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) was recently developed to shift education away from memorization and high-stakes examinations toward helping learners develop practical and critical thinking skills. The shift has changed the structure of the curriculum to the following:
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Pre-Primary (2 years): PP1 and PP2 (Pre-K and Kindergarten USA equivalent)
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Primary School (6 years): Grades 1-6
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Junior Secondary (3 years): Grades 7-9
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Senior Secondary (3 years): Grades 10-12
At the Senior Secondary level, learners choose pathways aligned with their strengths from the following:
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STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
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Social Sciences
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Arts and Sports Science
Pathway choice is determined by continuous assessment including, projects, portfolios, practical tasks and national assessments. Students cannot openly choose any pathway they want as there are requirements for each pathway. For example, if a student is interested in STEM but do not perform well in the competency assessments for STEM, they are unable to choose the STEM pathway for their senior secondary school years. However, interest is still considered as long as a student meets minimum threshold requirements for the pathway of interest. If a student meets requirements for all three pathways a student is free to choose which pathway they are most interested in pursuing. This opens up a world of possibilities for them for their future.
This makes it even more critical for students to have the proper resources to perform well in their assessments and nurture their natural talents. Because of this shift in curriculum, sports are no longer viewed as extracurricular activities. Physical Education and Art/Music are now a mandatory part of the curriculum in primary school. Sports Education was once a forgotten pillar of education, now its importance has been recognized.
Sports are one of the most effective ways to develop essential life skills. Through teamwork, students learn cooperation and communication. Through competition, they develop resilience, discipline, perseverance and respect for others. These experiences prepare children to become responsible and productive members of their communities.
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A typical school day for a primary school student in rural Machakos, Kenya, begins very early in the morning. Many school children wake up around 5:30 a.m and walk between 1 to 5 miles to school, arriving as early as 6:30 a.m. Upon arrival, some students attend morning remedial classes or tutoring sessions that help reinforce previous lessons or support those who need extra help. These remedial classes often begin at sunrise because most schools do not have electric lighting. Around 7:30 a.m., the entire school gathers for the morning parade, where the national flag is raised, announcements are made, and students may sing the national anthem and school songs.
Formal classroom lessons usually begin shortly after the parade, around 8:00 a.m. Class sizes are often large, with about 40 to 60 students per class, and it is common for two to three pupils to share a single desk. The day includes learning in subjects such as Mathematics, English, Kiswahili, Science, and Social Studies. Under the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), teaching has gradually shifted from purely teacher-centered methods to more learner-centered approaches that emphasize skills development, creativity, and practical application of knowledge. Teachers are encouraged to engage students through group work, discussions, projects, and hands-on activities that allow learners to actively participate in the lesson. For example, in Mathematics, learners may work in groups to solve real-life problems, while in languages such as English and Kiswahili, students engage in storytelling, role-playing, and collaborative reading activities. Science lessons often incorporate simple experiments and observations to build inquiry skills, and Social Studies may involve projects that connect classroom learning to the local community.
Assessment under CBC is continuous and focuses on evaluating learners' competencies rather than relying solely on end-term examinations. Teachers observe students' participation, creativity, communication skills, and ability to apply knowledge in different contexts. Despite these improvements, challenges such as limited teaching materials, large class sizes, and inadequate training sometimes affect the full implementation of CBC, and students still rely heavily on shared textbooks and teacher guidance. Short breaks are provided for recreation. No lunch is provided at school, so students either bring food from home, have their parents bring meals to them at lunchtime, or rely on the kindness of classmates who share what they have with those who do not have food.
Classes typically end in the late afternoon, around 3:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., after which students participate in co-curricular activities such as athletics, football, volleyball, netball, music, or clubs. Students then begin their journey home, often arriving in the early evening. Once home, many children help their families with chores such as fetching water, collecting firewood, caring for livestock, or working on the family farm before completing homework by evening. Despite these daily responsibilities and challenges, many students remain determined to succeed, viewing education as a pathway to a brighter future.
We are fortunate to have a team of dedicated professionals who volunteer their time and expertise to support the children and communities we serve. Because MEF is 100% volunteer-run, our operational expenses remain minimal. These modest costs include essentials such as website hosting and maintenance, software subscriptions, accounting and compliance fees, banking and payment processing fees, and communication and fundraising tools. These expenses are covered by a small group of generous private donors, allowing public donations to be directed entirely toward student programs and infrastructure projects that directly benefit the students we serve.