BBright Kenya

Eastern Africa is a dangerous place for too many children. With targeted help and hope, Bbright is changing that.

Our Work in Kenya

Why We Serve Here

Our mission in Kenya is to help two groups of children:

Children of the Mathare Slum
The Mathare Slum is one of the poorest, most desperate, and overcrowded areas in Nairobi. More than half a million people occupy just one square mile. They struggle to meet basic needs. Clean water, food, and health care are scarce to nonexistent. Destitution and disease are rampant.

Children of the Maasai
The Maasai are a nomadic people whose children often lack school at all, and rarely have safe passage to one. For many Maasai children, attending school means crossing the Savanna and its terrifying wildlife on foot. And for many Maasai girls, the only future is one of forced marriage.

A History of Need

In Mathare
The Mathare slums started in the 1950s as affordable government housing. But over time, the government’s attention shifted, investment in the area fell, and maintenance dried up. Then the population exploded. The final straw was Kenya’s political unrest in the 1990s and early 2000s. It gave way to a breakdown in law and order that decimated Mathare. The area has never recovered.

Among the Maasai
The nomadic Maasai have traditionally relied on cattle and other livestock for their well-being. But economic and political forces in Kenya have led to population growth, reduced access to grazing land and water sources, and increased competition for resources. And the extreme patriarchal Maasai culture has taken freedom and consent away from many of its women and girls.

Fast Facts That Drive Our Work

Kenyan regions we’re in:
The Mathare Valley, the oldest of the Mathare slums, and the Great Rift Valley north of Nairobi.

Major Risks for Kenyan Children:
Malnutrition, violence, child labor, trafficking, forced marriage

Percentage of children in the slums who attend primary school:
10-20%

Percentage of children in the slums who attend secondary school:
<2%

Percentage of children under 5 who suffer from chronic malnutrition:
42%

The Children We Help

Without outside help, the children of the Mathare slums and the children of the Maasai share a common fate. They are often trapped, uneducated, malnourished, and exploited. They have almost no shot at a future and every chance of becoming sick, used, and forgotten.

Currently, we help support more than 800 children in Kenya. They range in age from primary school to high school.

Our Partners in Kenya

African Inland Church (AIC) Zion
AIC Zion is a Christian school for children of the Mathare Valley. It provides these children with two meals a day, wellness care, an education, college prep, and Bible training. Most of all, it provides them with the hope of Jesus and a path to a career and future.

Lion of Judah
Lion of Judah is a safe and walkable school in the grasslands of central Kenya. For every eight students who pay tuition there, the school accepts two Maasai children for free. And while it is not a boarding school, Lion of Judah makes an exception for Maasai girls. The school provides room and board for these girls to shield them from forced marriages.