The idea of Project Baraka first came to my sister and I in 2004, when we were enjoying our annual trip to Kenya. At the time, we were 15 and 13 years old, and not yet mature enough to understand the real problems facing Kenya or what actions we could take to make a difference.
Five days into our vacation, we began talking with a boy named Hudson Baraka, a hotel employee. He asked us to come to his village and meet his family. The next day we were walking through an entirely different world, where houses were made from dirt and elephant dung, there was no electricity, and water was a five mile walk away. In the next few years, we came to know Hudson, his family, and his village. We came to understand their lives and their challenges. We visited the village primary school with overcrowded classrooms and scarce resources, and we learned that Hudson's sisters would not go on to secondary school as there was not enough money to go around. When you live close to the poverty line, boys take precedence while their sisters repeat the cycle of illiteracy, poverty, and servitude.
As we researched the issues that concerned us, we found that the United Nations has consistently advocated that educating girls has a larger impact on the developing world than any other initiative. As founder of Room to Read, John Wood says "When you educate a boy, you educate just the boy, but when you educate a girl, you educate the whole family and the next generation."
Project Baraka is our attempt to make a difference. It is a non-profit organization aimed primarily at high school and college aged students like my sister and I. We want to mobilize young people in America's affluent society to contribute to enabling
economically disadvantaged yet intelligent teenage girls in Kenya, so that they can
participate in a high quality secondary education and, over time, change their societies.
