Welcome to The Safina Initiative!

My family and I began this project in 2009 partly as a way to keep faith with our origins in Nandi County, Kenya. This part of my journey started in 2005 when I left my work providing health care to vulnerable rural people in the Rift Valley, and moved to the United States to study medicine.

To study and work in the United States was an amazing opportunity for me, but I was regularly haunted by what was happening at home in my absence. Because there is limited access to health care in the rural areas of the Rift Valley, many people were dying in my community from preventable causes. Women and children who had depended upon my services had nowhere to turn.

My husband, daughters, and I came to understand that our future lay partly in the direction of our past, and so we founded a nonprofit organization dedicated to the service of vulnerable rural communities in the Rift Valley, Kenya.

When we began the organization, we named it “I Care Grace International” out of recognition of the role of God’s grace in the revitalization of the world and our commitment to the care of our fellow human beings. After more than a decade of service, following the advice of community leaders in Kenya, we renamed it “The Safina Initiative.” The word “Safina” in Swahili is “ark.” The community settled upon the name, I think, because our mission is to protect the most vulnerable as a way to lay the groundwork for our future flourishing.

It has been quite a journey for everyone who has contributed to our efforts over the last thirteen years! From teachers to nurses, mothers to grandfathers, project engineers to doctors, to workers, cooks, dishwashers, accountants, lawyers, cab drivers, residential hosts, we have seen the whole community come together for the common good again and again. First came the Kapsirichoi Health Clinic, then the Paster Eliud Misoi Elementary School. Now the Loice Isendi Women’s Health Center is scheduled for completion in late 2023.

We’re not stopping there! The Safina Initiative is honored to have received a generous donation of family land from the famed Kenyan Olympic gold medalist Eliud Kipchoge to serve as the location of a community college. We have commissioned building plans for the school, and are in the beginning stages of laying out a labor and materials budget for the building. Our elementary school is thriving, but it is in need of more permanent classrooms, and our board is determined to build a library and populate it with books just as soon as possible. The clinic serves more and more people every year, but needs technology upgrades, medical equipment, and medical supplies. The more one does, the more one finds there is to do, but what a joy it is to do it.

We are both humbled and thrilled to invite you to join hands with us in this initiative. Whether you donate once, a little each month, serve as a volunteer, or help us get the word out about our mission, we are grateful for your aid. A little goes a long way in Kenya; no contribution is too small. Our broad successes are founded upon the great generosity that shines through the most modest of gifts!