The latest Fellow blog by John Briggs in Kenya is spurred by the newest debate raging here at KF and is definitely worth reading...
http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2009/06/20/pissed-off-kiva-lenders/however...
I want to make special note of the bio at the end describing Stephen Makanga, KADET’s integration and donor relations manager. This for me shows the results of education and what it can accomplish in a country like Kenya. This kind of caring individual passing along his skills to help others, is one of the reasons we lend through Kiva and also make donations through
Education Generation.
I was afraid it might get overshadowed by the rest of the debate
Stephen Makanga is from Emali, Makueni District, Eastern Province, Kenya. Growing up, his father and mother were subsistence farmers who grew corn, beans, vegetables, and coffee (”when the industry was still good”), and raised livestock such as cows and goats. He has four sisters and five brothers, and is the youngest among his siblings. Stephen is the only one in his family to have attended university, though one brother attended a teacher training college and is now a primary school teacher. Stephen attended Egerton University in Nakuru, working his way through school as a public high school teacher who got some support from his parents; he also got loans Higher Education Loans Board, which he’s still paying off at the age of 40. He graduated in 1994 with a degree in agricultural economics.
After graduation, it was hard for Stephen find steady employment, so he took a series of small teaching jobs. In 1997, he got a job with the Ministry of Agriculture as an agricultural extension officer, training farmers as a beekeeping specialist. He left his government position in 2000 to work for World Vision Kenya. At World Vision, he started as a program coordinator for a small food security project in the northeast of Kenya. He went on to be a program manager in charge of the Wajir (district in NE Kenya) relief and rehabilitation program. After that, he moved to Monitoring and Evaluation for the coast region of World Vision Kenya. A year later, Stephen became the program manager overseeing all World Vision development programs for coastal Kenya. He joined KADET, which is owned by World Vision, in 2007 as the manager of Integration and Donor Relations.
jan
