Mission Critical

Nonprofit work changes you, it just does, not the work, but the sense of mission. I’m not going to say it makes you a better person, but it can change your outlook on life, and not always for the better. I’m a patient person by nature, but the setbacks involved in growing a small organization can burn me up sometimes.

For over two years now thousands of Somalia’s citizens have been streaming across the board into Kenya because a prolonged drought and a civil war has destroyed the food distribution network in their own country. There are parts of Somalia where it hasn't rained for years
It’s not that they’re hungry. From my experience East Africans can live with hunger when need be. It’s not that they’re hungry, it’s that they’re starving.

Kenya has had limited help setting up refugee camps near the Somali border, but local politics and other issues have clouded the issue. The refugees have been seen as a national security threat for Kenya, politics at the UN, several attempts to draw them into the global warming debate, and as a result almost half a million people are living in a camp designed to hold 90,000 people.

I run an small non profit that supports an orphanage and school in rural Kenya, and we could be doing more. Among the thousands streaming across the boarder every day are countless children who have lost their parents along the way. The lucky ones are picked up by women, not unlike our own Momma Hannah, who collect children and keep them alive, but that’s not a workable long-term solution.

I run an small non profit that supports an orphanage and school in rural Kenya, and we have thousands of boys and girls who need a stable home and in theory we could provide that. I want to tell my board to gear up for a second site, fly to Kenya and start providing aid to these children, who arrive at the Dagahaley Camp malnourished and near death’s door. I want to help save these children’s lives, it’s what I do, it’s my mission and the longer I do it the more my life revolves around that.

I can see the plan spinning out in my head, what kind of supplies, personal and funding we’d need. I have this overwhelming desire to act, but then I remember our mission, and the length of our reach. I have to remember that for now I don’t have the organization capable of helping those children, so I have to focus on what we can do, and that’s take care of 35 orphans who need a home in a different part of Kenya. It’s my job to look after them, and all I can do is hope and pray, that others will find their own mission.

Caption: We were lucky enough to experience rain several times while we were in Kenya this year. This picture was taken during a ground-soaking afternoon thunderstorm, the kind of storms that are a rare gift in parts of East Africa