My favorite quote from the article: "We bring to light that frailty is not the thing. It is about you as a person, and the inner belief that you are worth defending - that your spirit tells you that you have a purpose, and you have to defend that purpose." -Philip Otieno, Executive Director of I'm Worth Defending.

Sierra Leone's Civil War (1991-2002) left many orphaned children as its truest casualties, and now they are forced into child prostitution and other inhumane circumstances, just to survive. Similarly and differently, the poverty and gang violence in Bed-Stuy/Marcy Park, Brooklyn kills its children, both literally and metaphorically, as they are either gunned down or forced into premature adulthood. The correspondence between children of those two worlds is heart rending: Rather than becoming hardened and cynical these children shine when invited to share their respective lives with each other.

The movie is poignant, entertaining, and validating for anyone doing this work. I walked out of it feeling encouraged about the endless possibilities, for children to make friends across the world. I identified an overarching theme - finding power in witnessing the triumphs and struggles of another - that breaks through the common thread of poverty, violence, and isolation in these two communities. 

I encourage any interested person to join Brownstones' mailing list (instructions on the website, linked above) to find out when it will screen where you live.

The study finds that rape and sexual exploitation are prevalent in Nyanza, Coast, Western, and Nairobi, the provinces in which researchers carried out the study. As might be expected, female, HIV-positive orphans are at the highest risk of forced marriage, in addition to other forms of abuse.

It is striking that a place of such natural beauty, spiritual generosity, and cultural strength holds this dark reality. There is so much life in Kenya ... and yet, as these jarring statistics show, the lives of many Kenyan women are compromised. Somehow, both truths exist.

Yet, as residents or even one-time visitors can attest, depravity is not the only face of the slums. I frequently speak of the palpable joy that effuses from the people who suffer as this article describes. The Nairobi slum dwellers I know are heroic, forever shining their bright spirits. Notwithstanding the atrocities of their daily lives, their cultural gratitude is immense. 

Before I traveled to the Kawangware slum of Nairobi, I had never seen such spiritual wealth - even in my own country, the United States of America, where we have many collective blessings to celebrate.

Spiritual riches aside, those in the slums need help. I continually ask myself, "What more can I do to keep their felicity bulbs burning?"

I am excited to announce the launch of Dear Friend, a program I have designed to pair Kenyan and U.S. children with long-term pen pals. I recently accepted a board seat as Director of Special Programs for Amsha Africa Foundation ("AAF"), and I will execute Dear Friend in this capacity. I am posting to gather the names of children in each country who wish to be matched with a child in the other one, and also to raise funds for the program.

The goal of Dear Friend is to sustain long-term, 1:1 relationships between as many pair of U.S. and Kenyan children as possible, and to help all participating children achieve literacy goals, heighten their cultural awareness, and feel the joy of knowing another child across the world cares about them. This project will preserve the art of letter writing for our generation's children, teaching them to communicate well through the written word.

Any child in either country, between ages five and sixteen, is eligible. Once matched with a child of similar age and same gender in the other country, each child will begin the pen pal exchange. Dear Friend will provide all necessary writing supplies and postage to the parents, teachers, orphanage staff members, and other supervising adults of the enrolled children. All mailings will be directed to the addresses the supervising adults provide at registration; these addresses will either be schools, orphanages, or parents' homes.

Dear Friend will also provide support, ensuring that all children receive letters from their pen pals on a regular basis. (Letters between Kenya and the U.S. typically take two weeks to travel, and we expect that children on each side will reply to letters within a few days to two weeks of receipt.)

Tony Abuta (AAF's Executive Director) and I have begun to accumulate a list of children in both countries who want pen pals. I expect that by mid-February, I will have created hundreds of pairings, and that the letter exchanges will have begun. Tony and I plan to return to Kenya in May. My primary objective for this trip is to meet with headmasters and headmistresses at partnering schools, staff members at pre-selected orphanages, and parents within the community, to increase awareness of Dear Friend and expand my list of Kenyan pen pals.

Between now and this summer, I will spend several hours per week launching, maintaining, and expanding Dear Friend. My work will entail visiting, calling, and emailing Bay Area schools to identify U.S. pen pals; placing calls and writing emails to U.S. parents for the same purpose; and communicating with various AAF staff members, regarding their work securing profiles on the Kenyan children already enrolled.

In December 2009, I sent an email to several friends and colleagues who are parents, requesting an immediate response. Tony was soon to leave for the poverty-ravaged slums of Kenya, to deliver on various AAF projects. My goal was to send with him as many holiday cards as I could, made by U.S. children for the Kenyan orphans whom he would visit on his trip. Within days, my contacts had forwarded my email to their friends and colleagues, among them several teachers pledging that their students would create the requested holiday cards as a class project.

Under a deadline of only a few days from the request date, over 100 children created holiday cards under parental and teacher supervision, which I forwarded to Tony. Before Tony left for Kenya, he scanned each card and posted the collection on AAF's Facebook page. Upon his return, he reported that the orphans had screamed, jumping up and down, upon receiving the cards; they were overcome with joy to know that children across the world were thinking of them over the holidays.

If you are on Facebook and have not yet joined the AAF group, please do. There, you will find the scanned holiday cards, as well as photos and video of other successful AAF projects.

Dear Friend will rely on donor generosity to operate, and will gratefully accept your financial support, whether or not you enroll a child in the program. Donation is not a prerequisite to enrollment; participation is free. However, personal donations are critical to Dear Friend's success: Dear Friend will not receive support from AAF's general funds. Also, grant money for international service work is scarce, and can take several months to secure even when granted.

My initial fundraising goal is $5,000, secured through personal donations by March 15, 2010. Your donation is tax-deductible, and AAF will apply 100% of your gift directly to Dear Friend. (If you donate online, Network for Good will deduct 4.9% of your donation as a processing fee, but AAF will apply the entire 95.1% that we receive directly to Dear Friend. If you donate by check, we will apply 100% of your gift directly to Dear Friend.) Tony and I will personally oversee all recording and spending of Dear Friend donations.

I expect to bank in Dear Friend's account at least $1,000-2,000 of the $5,000 raised, so that I can respond to future requests for supplies as immediately as I receive them and Tony and I approve them. However, I hope to raise my $5,000 target by march, as I will need to spend most of my time in the first few months on program operations, grant research, and grant applications, before resuming my efforts to secure further personal donations.

I extend my heartfelt thanks, for supporting me in facilitating relationships between Kenyan and U.S. children. Whether you enroll children or provide financial support, or both, the lives you touch will be forever changed for the better. 

To enroll a child, send me an email at katie.burke@amshaafrica.org, with the child's name, gender, and age. I will personally reply, and we will move forward with the matching process.

To make a financial gift, please visit the AAF website, at www.amshaafrica.org, and click on the link to Network for Good. Designate Dear Friend where indicated, so that we know to apply your donation to this project in particular, and not to AAF in general. If you prefer to pay by check, click on the site's "contact us" link, and find the address where you can mail your check. Write the check out to Amsha Africa Foundation, specifying "Dear Friend" in the memo line.

I wish you all great joy in 2010, and I thank you again for joining me in this vision.

Many thanks, 

Katie Burke

Director - Special Programs

Amsha Africa Foundation