Watch Monica’s heartfelt story here.
This is Monica. She lives on a small rural property with her grandmother Sho Sho, just outside of Ngong, Kenya. She is a smart, funny and caring 19-year-old girl, who dreams of one day attending college and training to become an engineer.
Monica had a difficult life as a child. After being abandoned by her mother as an infant, she lived for a short while with her alcoholic father before her grandparents took her in and raised her. Money has always been tight, but when the pandemic hit life for Monica and Sho Sho got extremely hard. Monica went door-to-door in her village trying to find any work to provide for her grandma. Some days they wouldn’t have enough food to eat, and they couldn’t afford their rent. It made Monica very sad to see the woman who raised her go hungry. She was worried about what to do. She felt so hopeless and like giving up many times.
In June 2020, Monica reached out to Maddi who she had met at a reusable menstrual pad distribution at her soccer club a year earlier. She explained that she had an idea for a samosa business that would provide for herself and her grandma, but needed help in raising the initial startup costs. She noted how in her village no one else was selling samosa, so she saw a gap in the market and was motivated to get working. Evie Grace Foundation donors helped provide some rent assistance to Monica to ease her financial burden, and supplied her with $200 to set up her samosa cart.
A few months on, Monica and Sho Sho are doing well. Monica wakes up at 5am every morning to prepare the samosa, and gets to her cart in time for the morning rush. By 2pm she has sold out, so returns home to help her grandmother with the housework. She now is the sole breadwinner for her family at just 19. She has a lot of responsibility, but still finds time to play soccer with her friends in the afternoons, something that she loves to do. She works incredibly hard, but is less worried about her family’s survival because she is making an income through her business.
Monica has had a hard life and she sacrifices a lot for her grandma, but her dream is so big!
Through the support of Evie Grace Foundation’s donors, she has managed to start and run a successful business by herself, learning the required planning, organising and bookkeeping skills through online training sessions with Maddi. This is no small feat! She hopes one day to have enough money to put herself through college, and make her dream of becoming an engineer a reality! Because of your help, she faces a much brighter future for herself and her family.
With your support, we can help more girls like Monica break from cycles of poverty, gain new skills and confidence, and achieve their dreams. Help us build a safe, transitional home for street girls in Malawi in 2021. We are currently raising money towards the construction of our KITCHEN! Please help us reach our goal.
The power of people is real and your engagement with us has been essential to our work. Together, we have achieved so much, but there is much more to do.
To find out more about how you can support our Therapeutic Home for Girls, including our ‘Fund a Room’ program, see here!
Written by Maddi Kent
