Handbags made by Janny for MaasaiGirls
One is never too old to set up a sponsorship campaign! We saw that through a great initiative by Janny, the mother of Brigitte, 88 years young!
She wanted to contribute to the education of our MaasaiGirls. In August, she started selling beautiful homemade handbags and toiletry bags. Sales were excellent, and to complete her campaigne she had a stall at the weekly market in the senior living centre OBG Nijmegen in November.
The money she collected was above expectations and will fully benefit the education of MaasaiGirls.
Janny, many thanks for your efforts and this beautiful donation!
Would you also like to set up a sponsorship campaign to support us? Please let us know! We are happy to help by providing texts, photos and QR codes for donations.
Faith has graduated!
In 2018, Faith managed to touch our hearts with her dream at a campfire in the Kenyan bush:
My dream is to become the voice of the Maasai girls and my society, to fight for their rights to education, fight against female genital mutilation, fight teenage pregnancy among the young maasai girls, fight against child marriages and making this young girls realize their dreams.
With the help of our sponsors, she was able to start her studies in Communication and Public Relations at St. Pauls University Kenya in January 2019. While studying, her academic results, her personal development, her ambitions and her entrepreneurial drive evolved and improved at a high pace.
Click here for more information about Faith.
During her studies, Faith was already committed to all kinds of projects for her community. Together with Purity, one of our other students, a wide range of projects were set up to help their communities move forward in their development. This has brought so much energy and inspiration to their fellow villagers that everyone is now participating in new plans and a better future.
Read more about Faith and Purity’s impact on their communities.
Faith completed her Bachelor in Communications with excellent grades and received her degree during a beautiful Graduation Ceremony on 14 November!
And of course, a big celebration was held in her community afterwards!
Congratulations Faith! We are all incredibly proud of you. Keep up all your good work for your community. As a result we, as StandUp4Talent, have the impact on communities in Kenya that we want to achieve with our sponsorships.
StandUp4Talent is celebrating its 10 year anniversary!
We started our StandUp4Talent foundation with great enthusiasm in 2014, so we are celebrating our 10th anniversary this year!
Thanks to the generous gifts of our donators, we have been able to support more than 50 students in their education during these 10 years. Some with a one-off donation or temporary support. Others needed our support throughout their school careers.
We are very proud of our hard-working students who take the opportunities we are able to offer them thanks to our donators. A number of students have now graduated.
We are very grateful to all our donators! We hope we can continue to count on you in the future and offer many more young people a chance for a better future!
Information about donations
A Warm Reunion with Our Students in Kenya
This year, once again, we visited our students and the communities we work with in Kenya.
Seeing with our own eyes and hearing with our own ears what is happening adds so much value! And direct personal contact has such a big impact on both the students and the communities!
We received a very warm welcome in the villages of Orpirikata and Tikoishi, met with all the high school students, and held meetings with the CBOs about ongoing and future projects.
We visited several other projects to explore future plans, particularly in the areas of permaculture and water supply.
In Nairobi, we had individual meetings with all our bachelor students and organized another dinner for the whole group, the “StandUp4Talent Family Dinner.”
It was another impressive trip!
Read our full report here
Teckler has graduated!
Teckler has completed her Bachelor of Commerce studies at Jomo Kenya University of Agriculture and Technology. At the Graduation Ceremony on 28 June, she was decorated with Maasai jewellery and congratulatory cards by her “sisters”.
We are very proud of Teckler. As a young girl, she ran away from home to avoid forced marriage and ended up in a rescue centre where she was able to complete primary school. Thanks to support from StandUp4Talent and a few special sponsors, she was able to attend High School and university. During her studies, Teckler faced several problems and difficulties, but thanks to her perseverance and by working very hard, she managed to complete her Bachelor’s degree.
Teckler is now looking for a job or a scholarship for a master’s study abroad.
We warmly congratulate her and wish her lots of success!
Great news: Yamikani has a job!
Thanks to the support of StandUp4Talent Yamikani was able to study at the Catholic University of Malawi in Limbe, Bachelor of Arts in Education.
He graduated in September 2022. The poor economic situation in Malawi made it very difficult to find a job. To increase his chances in to find a job, he started working as an English teacher at his old school on a voluntary, so unpaid, basis.
In early 2024, his efforts were rewarded! He was officially employed as a teacher by the Ministry of Education!
Wereldwinkel Sint Michielsgestel and Berlicum many thanks for your donation!
This year, we received a generous donation from the Wereldwinkel in Sint Michielsgestel and Berlicum. The Wereldwinkel sells original gifts from other cultures. The producers receive a fair price, enabling them to make a decent living. Wereldwinkel is operated by about 50 volunteers, who enthusiastically dedicate themselves to charity.
Part of the profit is donated every year to charity organisations nominated by the volunteers. StandUp4Talent was one of the lucky ones this year!
We thank all Wereldwinkel volunteers for their efforts and this generous donation!
Visiting our students in Kenya
In August-September 2023, we (Stefan and Brigitte) visited all our students in Kenya.
We visited our high school students in their villages during their school holidays. It was nice to talk to them in their own environment, without the pressure of the strict school regime. And it was nice to meet their parents and their communities.
We met our undergraduate students in Nairobi. We visited some universities and got a glimpse of life in their student accommodations. Seeing the circumstances in which they have to live and study gives you a huge appreciation and respect for their achievements.
At the end of our journey, we organised a dinner for our undergraduate students, our “StanddUp4Talent Family Dinner”, so they could get to know each other. We hope that in the future they will support each other, give tips, work together, etc.
Esther Naini has graduated!
Esther Naini (1995) is one of many Maasai Girls who, with the help of Hellen Nkuraiya, managed to escape from female genital mutilation and forced marriage in exchange for a few cows. Hellen is a very special Maasai woman who has been working for girls like Esther Naini for years.
In August 2018 Esther Naini was able to start her study at Daystar University (Athi River Campus) Bachelor of Arts in Community Development thanks to the support of StandUp4talent. With this study she wants to prepare herself for the continuation of the good works of Hellen.
In October 2022, she graduated and that hit the national headlines! The Kenyan public television broadcasted a report (https://youtu.be/DJXKdT_ixGM) of the wonderful party her community organised for her. They are super proud of her and so are we!
More information about Ether Naini: click here
Jecinta has been accepted into the Faculty of Law at the University of Nairobi!
Jecinta completed her final exams at Moi Girls High School, one of the best schools in Nairobi, with excellent grades.
For a long time, it was her dream to become a doctor. But she nevertheless decided to study law to be able to offer legal support to her Maasai community in the future for the many problems they face.
In October 2022, she started her bachelor degree at the Faculty of Law of the University of Nairobi.
We wish to continue supporting this talented young lady to fulfil her ambitions and wish her lots of success!
Rosa Maria has graduated!
Rosa Maria (1998) started studying hotel management in Cusco in 2018. Her dream is to become a manager of a major hotel in Cusco.
On 1 September 2022, she completed her studies with a presentation about the hotel where she did her final internship. She talked about the extraordinary architecture, the organisation, her activities during her internship and ended with recommendations for the hotel. Her mother, brother, uncles and cousins were present at her presentation.
She was awarded with a very high score by the examination committee: 18! ( rating in Peru: 0 -20)
The hotel has offered her a job!
We are very proud of her! We congratulate her for this great result and wish her lots of success in continuing her career!
The year 2021 has come to an end!
Once again, a year with many challenges for our students. Lockdowns and online education, partly or entirely, which is not easy with unstable internet connections and high costs for data bundles. Concerns about health and limited access to vaccines. And worries about the economic position of their parents during the pandemic.
However, there were also highlights. We are very happy to congratulate 4 students who graduated this year!
Lawrence (Malawi) has graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (Accountancy) at the Catholic University of Malawi in Limbe in the autumn of 2021. Lawrence would like to continue his studies and complete his Master Degree.
Faith (Kenya) graduated in April 2021 with her Diploma in Communication and Public Relations at St. Pauls University Kenya in Nairobi. With an honours award for best student of her year! We are very proud of her. She wants to continue her studies and already started her Bachelor in Communication and Public Relations with great enthusiasm.
Ulfa (Indonesia) has successfully completed her senior secondary school exams in May this year. She has been admitted to UNPAD University in Pangandaran to study nursing. The Meraih Bintang Foundation will sponsor her further education.
Zoraida (Peru) received her diploma Profesional Tecnico and Guia Oficial de Turismo at the Instituto Khipu Cusco in April 2021. She is now officially certified as a guide. We hope that Peru will be able to receive tourists again in the coming year so that she will be able to practise her passion.
Besides their studies, this year our students have also dedicated themselves to their communities or fellow students. We are very proud of their efforts.
Faith was asked to give a presentation at Oloibor Soit Secondary School in Kajiado for the Strong Maasai Ladies Association SMALA about the big importance of education for girls. Her wish to be a role model for other girls in her community became true!
Esther Naini was elected to represent the students of her faculty in the student council and became a volunteer with Desh Care, an organisation that works, among other things, to improve the position of girls and women.
She also took part in an ecological project that involved planting 1,000 trees in a local community.
We hope that the new year will be happy and successful for our students, with lots of pleasure in their studies, good results, diplomas, and of course good health!
What did corona-year 2020 look like for our students?
The year 2020 was dominated by the global corona pandemic for all of us. In the Netherlands, the impact on each person’s life was significant. For some it was easy to handle, with just a few adjustments and some creativity. For lots of people, the consequences were huge.
How was life for our students in that first corona year? Schools and universities had to close down. Online learning was only possible for a limited number of courses. And for online learning you need a laptop and access to a reliable and stable internet connection. How did the economic situation of their parents change?
We asked our students what the impact of the pandemic was on their lives, their studies, their future perspectives. Their stories are impressive.
StandUp4Talent Sponsor dinner 2020
How to find enough financial funding for the support of our students? That’s an ongoing issue for us. Our regular donors offer a solid basis, but additional funds are always welcome. We thought organizing a sponsor dinner would be a nice experiment, combining something useful with something pleasant.
As soon as the first invitations were sent, it was obvious that a lot of people were interested. In no time we were fully booked, and we even had to put people on a waiting list. That was great!
But organising a dinner for 35 people in your own house is quite a job! We were very happy a lot of people offered to help us and were willing to lend us a lot of equipment (Who’s got 35 soup bowls?). The strong young men of our team transformed the living room into a restaurant (thanks Yoeri and Joey!), Brigitte and Thérèse took care of decorating the tables, Anoek was our professional supervisor of the cooking team (Stefan and Steven, and everyone else who had nothing else to do), Rob and Charlotte took care of the delicious wines and Paul and Wilma surprised us with very tasty snacks (and lent us those 35 soup bowls).
A quartet formed by Hans, Fred, Albert and Etienne van Dubbel Zes surprized us with a musical intermezzo and of course Stefan couldn’t resist joining them in singing along at the end.
In our “mini cinema” we showed a VR movie about the position of girls in Maasailand, made by Michiel de Koning, with the help of Faith Supeet, one of our students in Kenya.
And thanks to the help of Hellen Nkuraiya, we were able to offer very nice colourful Maasai bracelets for sale. Especially handmade for us by Maasai widows who live in the village that Hellen built especially for them.
Thanks to the enthusiasm and the positive energy of all our guests, and of course all helping hands, it became a fantastic evening. We look back on it with great pleasure. Many many thanks to everyone who contributed to this wonderful event!
And we are also very happy with the revenue of more than 2,800 euros!
In other words, our experiment turned out to be a very successful. So let’s go for a follow-up next year!
Teckler passed her final exams!
Teckler was one of the first MaasaiGirls who got the chance to go to high school with the support of our foundation.
Ezekiel Ole Katato of Across Maasai Land Initiative first met Teckler after she ran away from home to avoid forced marriage. She found shelter and support in a rescue center in Kajiado, where she got the chance to finish primary school. Ezekiel was impressed by her talent and motivation, and asked us to give her the opportunity to continue her studies.
In February 2016 Teckler was given the opportunity to start at MITABONI ABC GIRLS’ HIGH SCHOOL, thanks to the sponsors of StandUp4Talent, and in December 2019 she passed her final exam with very good results. We are proud of her and thank all the sponsors who gave her this opportunity!
Now it is time for the next step:
Teckler is very motivated to continue her studies and has chosen Bachelor of Commerce at the Jomo Kenya University of Agriculture and Technology {JKUAT} in Nairobi. Of course our foundation is willing to give her the opportunity to attend this study. Therefore continuation of the donations for Teckler and extra donations to make her dream come true are more than welcome.
Many thanks for all donations made to celebrate our birthdays!
Since the foundation of StandUp4Talent we have asked all our dear friends and family members to give us a donation for our foundation on the occasion of our birthdays, instead of all the beautiful presents. This way our birthdays not only become a beautiful day for us, but also for the children and young people we support. This year (2018) the donations for our birthdays will be used for the study of Ester Naini from Maasailand Kenya (click here for more information).
We have already received a generous amount of money, of which approximately 1 academic year can be paid.
Once again, many thanks, also on behalf of Esther Naini!
Brigitte & Stefan
Donation from the Ontmoetingskerk Waddinxveen for the Maasai Girls
On 4 September 2017, during the Great Minds Meeting of MasterPeace, we received a beautiful donation, handed over by Lia and Goos van Vliet, from the Ontmoetingskerk in Waddinxveen. This year, our project for Maasai Girls in Kenya was selected for the proceeds of their annual flea market.
The presence of Ezekiel Ole Katato, leader of AMLI (Olakira Le Maa Trust) and our local contact person for support and mentorship of the Maasai Girls, made the handover of this donation extra special.
Many thanks to all the people involved in the Rommelmarkt Waddinxveen for this beautiful gift!
