The impact of your generosity on the community is truly amazing – Blaise Heckman
I would like to start with a moment of immense gratitude for each and every person that has come alongside Envision Kenya and supported our mission. This was my first trip to Kapkemich and seeing the impact your generosity has made to the community is truly amazing. That generosity is allowing these young women in rural Kenya to author their own story and having now seen it firsthand I am so excited to see what they write!
During our time there I had the privilege of teaching a sophomore and senior business class and coaching a soccer practice (easily in the top three moments of my life so far). The number of opportunities your support is able to provide the students is amazing but to me one of the greatest opportunities I saw was the opportunity for them to get to be teenage girls. Seeing the girls joke with one another and laugh on the way to and from practice or pass a note or two in class (I am not a disciplinarian so Mr. Heckman’s form four business class was a very lax environment) was so heart warming. The ability for them to learn and have the tools and resources to create a better life for themselves and their families is so vitally important but so is the opportunity for them to have a safe space where they can experience being a high schooler.
One of my favorite examples of this was at the student celebration. Gloria, I believe a form 2 student, came up to me, pointed at my camera and asked if she could take pictures of the celebration. I had a blast going through all the pictures and videos she took during the celebration. One video in particular, a 5-minute video where Gloria went around filming her friends and classmates before the celebration started was particularly special. In it, you got to see high schoolers being high schoolers. I don’t speak Swahili but I know when friends are giving each other a hard time, someone will always mistake a video for a picture and everyone will have a good laugh once they find out they posed for nothing, and a camera always finds the shy/embarrassed people. Seeing those universal moments play out in Gloria’s video was so amazing.
So thank you for all you do, but from me, most of all thank you for providing an opportunity for these young women to take a breath and enjoy being high schoolers.
Cheers,
Blaise
