Friends of Kenya congratulates Barack Obama on his presidential election. We also join Kenyans in their pride in having a man with a Kenyan father elected as the U.S. President!

The Embassy of Kenya in Washington, D.C., is offering a number of events surrounding the inauguration. Check out their website for information: http://www.kenyaembassy.com/

Friends of Kenya in D.C. is planning a celebratory dinner. Details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Wherever you are, we hope that you will join Friends of Kenya members in sending congratulations and best wishes to Barack Obama as he becomes the President of the United States.

Hello Friends of Kenya,

I am an RPCV (Tanzania, 1983-86) and now live in Edmond, Oklahoma. We have a student here from Kenya, Dan Nyagol, who will be in his second year at the University of Central Oklahoma studying to be a medical technician. His sponsor was his brother, who is married and working in Kansas. His brother was visiting Kenya recently, got arrested and was injured, and has not been able to help Dan. Dan owes some $1,000 and is still facing tuition needs for this fall.

Some of us are trying to help him out. If you can help him out too, it would be greatly appreciated. Donations to his scholarship fund are tax deductible.

Checks should be made out to "UCO Foundation" / Dan Nyagol scholarship fund.

Send to:

Office of International Student Services
University of Central Oklahoma
100 North University Drive
Edmond, OK 73034

Thank you so much!

Melissa Shackford

Friends of Kenya awarded a grant to the Nomadic Kenyan Children’s Educational Fund (NKCEF) to help send Marriel, who is Maasai, to secondary school where she can strive to achieve her goals of teaching her local community to read, write, and use better hygiene.

Marriel is in Form 1 (9th grade) at St. Brigid’s Girls School in Kitale. She is 16 years old, and one of 3 children. Her favorite subjects are science and English, and she promises to work hard to pursue her education.

She will attend secondary school through sponsorship from NKCEF, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children from nomadic communities attend secondary school.

For more information about NKCEF and how to directly support their scholarships for Kenyan students, visit their website at http://www.nkcef.org.

It’s your membership and support of Friends of Kenya that allows us to funnel funds to worthy organizations, such as NKCEF, and community projects in Kenya. Contributions to Friends of Kenya projects are tax-deductible. To make contributions, go to http://www.friendsofkenya.org/project/donate_project. (Click title for full article and link to photo.)

Students at Newton-Lee Elementary in Loudoun County, Va., worked together on a year-end project to send books to Kenya.

Books were donated from a book drive, brought in from home and collected from a few teachers’ personal classroom libraries.

Newton-Lee’s Community Club members and second-grade teacher Jensy Richards’ class got together to pack and send 50 pounds of gently used books to Kenya’s Camel Book Drive.

Richards’ class, which worked on several other projects locally during the 2007-2008 school year, decided to go abroad for their last project. The second-graders asked Newton-Lee’s Community Club (made up of fourth and fifth grade students) to help out.

Funding, in the form of a grant of $500 from Friends of Kenya, helped to pay for postage to mail the books and to buy new books from the Camel Book Drive’s wish list at Amazon.com. With funds remaining, another book drive is planned for this coming year. (Click title read read entire article.)

A Peace Corps reunion entitled, “Peace Corps & Friends: A Celebration,” will be held in Fort Collins, Colorado, on the weekend of August 22–24. Organized to celebrate our contributions to the world through the work of the Peace Corps, the event is sponsored by Beet Street, an initiative of the Fort Collins Downtown Development Authority, known for its dynamic cultural and arts programming. Highlights include keynote addresses by Jody Olsen, Peace Corps Deputy Director (RPCV-Tunisia); Kevin Quigley, NPCA President (RPCV-Thailand); and Carl Pope, Executive Director Sierra Club (RPCV-India). Additional keynote speakers, soon to be announced, will also be featured. (Click the title for the full article)

The Fall 2008 issue of WorldView magazine will center on the theme “Peace Corps for the 21st Century.”

In three years, Peace Corps will celebrate its 50th anniversary. How has it fared in that time? What is its legacy—and its future? Can a bigger, better and bolder Peace Corps be part of an overall “smart power” effort to restore U.S. standing in the world to better help address pressing global problems? (Click title for the full article and how to submit your ideas.)