My wife Brenda and I plan to walk 500 miles on the ancient and famous Compostela de Santiago Trail in Spain starting September 18, 2025. You can join us by making a pledge-per-mile or a total pledge to support the Makena Children’s Foundation. Follow us along at this site where I will blog and post photos about our experience!
Here’s why we are doing this:
Over a decade ago Brenda’s father, Ed Baich, introduced us to the Makena Children’s Foundation supported by himself and his wife Mary Jo. Both served on the Board of Directors. Here’s the story of its founding:
In the mid 90’s on a trip to rural Africa Sherri Mills, a lifelong friend of Mary Jo, took the opportunity to go on a safari in Kenya.
It was common practice on these long days of safari that participants would be provided lunch. Their Guide, Peter Muigai, would drive the safari-goers way off the beaten track, into little villages, and give the extra food from these lunches to hungry children. Upon arrival the village children would run to meet him knowing he was bringing much needed food. The safari participants delighted in interacting with the children.
Sherri asked Peter, “What do the children here need”? Without missing a beat Peter responded, “Education“!
From that brief conversation, the two of them founded the Makena Children’s Foundation and began a tireless effort to bring the plight of these children to light and provide the methods and means to change the lives and futures for the children and families of Maraigushu.
Sherri witnessed the overwhelming poverty in Kenya where the unemployment rate still hovers at 40% and less than 4% of adults have a university degree.
Further visits found huts in Maraigushu with no running water and countless children with unnatural reddish tinted hair (a sure sign of malnutrition). The families were devastated by the loss of at least one parent to epidemic AIDS, other diseases, accidents or abandonment (and had the average equivalent of a third grade education) and were found working hard in their un-irrigated gardens, to provide enough food to survive and praying for a new and better life for their children.
Unable to forget what she had witnessed, Sherri immediately set about working to find a way to help these children to take the steps necessary to elevate themselves and their village out of such devastating poverty and provide a new and better life for the next generation in Maraigushu.
It was obvious that without enough education to allow the children to enjoy, and share, the opportunities of the 20th century there was little hope for a better future for current and future generations.
Today, through the (exclusively volunteer) efforts of the Makena Children’s Foundation and a single paid Kenyan staff member, hundreds of children have been provided a quality education with many matriculating to advanced degrees and keeping their promise to “give back” to their native village. Makena graduates are teachers, nurses, pharmacists, salesmen, marketers, IT specialists and business owners; all committed to the growth and development of their village of Maraigushu.
The Makena Children’s Foundation is committed to its mission statement:
Education is the most sustainable path out of poverty.
After hearing the story of the children of Maraigushu, Brenda and myself were immediately touched by the story of a small foundation committed to a simple cause…to support educational advancement for those children in desperate circumstances and support their efforts to give back to the village of their home!
As avid hikers who have been blessed to spend time hiking all over the U.S.A., Europe, Central America and Asia and we came to the decision that using our hikes as a way to bring attention (and funding) to a worthy cause would bring a new level of fulfillment and Joy to our travels…hence we began our journey for…A Joyful Cause.
