Connecting Youth Across Continents for Change

Martin’s Dream

Education Program · Scholarship Recipient

At a community gathering in Kanjeru, James met a quiet 14-year-old hanging around the edges. James offered him a snack. He politely declined.

“I don’t need food. I need help with a school assignment.”

His mother had lost her job months earlier and quietly pulled him out of school. He’d been walking to class anyway, sitting outside the window, copying what he could remember from the chalkboard. The assignment came out of his pocket: a folded sheet of paper, creased from weeks of carrying.

Within a week, YFF covered his fees. Within a month, his uniform and supplies. Within six months, a scholarship that would carry him through secondary school.

This is why YFF exists. Kids don’t need pity. They need someone to take their dream seriously.

To protect this student’s privacy, his name has been changed and the photo replaced with an illustration. The story is real.

Veronica’s Shelter

Community Program · Housing

Veronica is a single mother of three. Before YFF found her, she and her kids had spent months moving between borrowed rooms, friends’ floors, and on the worst nights, the open air.

The cold in the central Kenya highlands is sharper than most people imagine. Her youngest had developed a cough that wouldn’t go away. The eldest had stopped going to school because she was embarrassed about her clothes.

What we offered first wasn’t a house. It was conversation, dignity, time. We listened. We asked what she needed, not what we thought she needed.

Six months later, her family moved into a small but solid home, built with local labor and donated materials. The cough cleared in weeks. The eldest is back in school. Veronica now mentors other single mothers in the community.

Every house we help build is the start of someone like her becoming the help she once received.

To protect this family’s privacy, names have been changed and the photo replaced with an illustration. The story is real.

Water for 29,000 People

Community Program · Water Access

Shauri Yako is a slum on the outskirts of Kikuyu. For more than sixty years, since Kenya’s independence, residents walked an average of forty minutes each way to fetch water of questionable quality. Children missed school. Women lost entire days to the task. Cholera was a recurring threat.

YFF’s water team worked with local leaders to identify a viable borehole site, secured the equipment, and partnered with a Kenyan drilling company to keep costs and skills local. The borehole came online with capacity to serve the entire neighborhood plus surplus for two adjacent communities.

Twenty-nine thousand people now have a five-minute walk for clean water that doesn’t make them sick. School attendance is up. Cholera cases are down. Several women have started small businesses with the hours they used to spend on water collection.

This is what infrastructure means when it’s built with the community rather than for them.