The Samburu Scholarship Program is located in the semi-arid lands of Northern Kenya. The Samburu people living here are nomadic pastoralists and their way of life is thousands of years old.  This is one of the most marginalized and poorest areas in Africa, lacking the most basic of amenities – clean water, roads, transport, pre-natal and infant healthcare.

The program is run by the Sereolipi Nomadic Education Trust. The goal of the Trust is to get as many children of the nomadic families to come to school as possible. The number of children attending school in the area has increased from 130 in 2001 to just over 1,000 in 2007. The web site www.thorntreeproject.org tells this story of how, against all odds, the people of Sereolipi in Northern Kenya, through hard work, resourcefulness and with a little help from the outside world, have begun to create significant, meaningful and measurable change in their lives.

The Samburu scholarship program was launched in late January 2006 and is a simple but highly effective program to ensure that all graduates of the two primary schools in the Sereolipi area are able to go on to secondary education (high school or technical school) and in some cases tertiary education. Generous individuals in the US or Europe pay $1000 each year to sponsor a student. The $1000 cover school fees ($500), school supplies and uniforms ($160), transport to and from school ($130), medical, tutoring and mentoring expenses ($210) that the child and his/her parents cannot afford.

This sponsorships are important because the average annual household income in the area is less than $300 a year.  In order to send a child to secondary school, at least six cows have to be sold each year for four years.  Few families have 24 cows to sell, a problem that is further compounded by the frequent droughts that deplete the herds.  Consequently, even if they qualify for secondary school, few students can even begin their studies and far fewer ever complete them.  And those that do complete typically spend so much time absent from school trying to raise money for tuition that their grades suffer and they graduate with marks that don’t qualify them for a job.

If the graduates from Sereolipi and Ndonyo Wasin Primary Schools can go on to more advanced education they will be able to get good jobs.  (In Kenya you need secondary school education even to be a cashier at the supermarket or an attendant at a gas station.) If they do well in secondary school they will be able to go on to teachers college, nursing school, the Kenya Wildlife Service, etc. Ultimately this will boost the socio-economic structure of the community, preserve the Samburu culture, mitigate poverty and allow these people to be in control of their own destiny.  It will also help these individual students achieve their own potential.

     We thank each of the student sponsors for their immense generosity. This program will change the destiny of hundreds of children and it exists entirely because of you. Your gift is a gift that will literally last a lifetime.