Kira’s Volunteer Experience

In January 2020, I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya, located in East Africa where I spent a month volunteering with an incredible organisation, Evie Grace Foundation. Evie Grace Foundation is an Australian based non-profit charity founded by Maddi Kent. I stumbled across this organisation in August 2019 whilst doing some in-depth research on volunteer organisations (and the effects of voluntourism!) for an assignment I was working on as part of my travel and tourism diploma. After reading countless articles on huge tourism companies that make profit from sending travellers around the world as ‘volunteers’ without actually doing any good for communities, I was hesitant. I spent some time doing as much digging as I could, but I just could not fault the work that this organisation was doing. The overall mission of Evie Grace Foundation is to eliminate child exploitation through community empowerment and educational programs in Kenya. They work with several non-profit partner organisations in Kenya and have implemented a number of projects including:

• Advocating on behalf of and rescuing street children in partnership with Global Hope Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre.
• Teaching human rights education to children of all ages at local Kenyan schools.
• Mentorship programs for young girls.
• Educating girls on menstruation (which is considered a taboo topic in their culture!) as well as distributing reusable menstrual pads.

Volunteering abroad was something that I had always been interested in doing. However, I wanted to go about it in the most ethical way possible and this was exactly that. It just so happened that they were looking for volunteers to travel to Kenya between November 2019 and May 2020. After a lot of thought I put in an expression of interest to volunteer for 4 weeks from January 8th to February 5th, 2020 and two days later I was accepted into the program. I had no idea what to expect, but I was incredibly excited!

January came around unbelievably fast, and before I knew it I was boarding my flight from Melbourne to Nairobi Airport. The following 20 hours on my first solo flight were a very long, exciting and terrifying time for me. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived. When I landed in Nairobi it took roughly 45 minutes to make my way through customs and visa checks but once I was through, the founder of the organisation, Maddi was waiting on the other side to take me to the volunteer house located in Ngong, a town located southwest of Nairobi city. The volunteer house was a big two-story house consisting of 4 bedrooms each fitted with bunk beds for the volunteers. It was a very different housing experience compared to what I was used to in the western world – water facilities were limited and often unpredictable as was electricity (during my 4 weeks there was an entire week that we had no water supply, and often we went full days without working electricity – talk about culture shock!). The following day another 2 volunteers joined us, we spent the day catching up on some sleep and combating jet-lag before the busy weeks ahead of us.

Our projects began with a visit to Global Hope Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, a partner organisation with Evie Grace Foundation that is home to over 100 former street boys giving them access to basic necessities such as food, water, shelter and most importantly, a loving home. The centre is only a short walk from the volunteer house so we were able to head over there often throughout the month to visit the boys. We spent the majority of the morning getting to know them; they were all very welcoming and eager to play games and to show us all their incredible Kenyan dances. The afternoon and the remaining days of the week were spent assisting Maddi with some school shopping duties as many of the boys were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to go to boarding school through child sponsorship.

The full first week involved a mentorship program with a local girls football team that Maddi looked out for – known as the Bul Queens. We connected with the girls on a personal level, shared some of our own experiences and gave them a safe space to talk about issues that they couldn’t necessarily talk to their friends and family about. Towards the end of the week, we headed to Kitengela, a town south of Nairobi city where we spent the day at Merciful Redeemer children’s home playing games, learning dances and doing activities. We provided them with resources that had been donated to Evie Grace Foundation such as books, pencils, sporting equipment and other fun activities which they were very grateful for.

Throughout the month we also visited multiple primary and secondary schools where we assisted Maddi in running some mentorship programs and educational classes on human rights, violence and abuse, mental health, drugs and alcohol, menstruation, and sex and relationships. Along with this we also provided reusable pad packs which included a set of reusable pads, a bar of soap and a spare pair of knickers to the young girls who may not otherwise have access to them as it is very common for sex to be exchanged on the streets for sanitary products which heavily increases the rate of STI’s and teen pregnancies.