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About Us

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Overview

Excellence. A Right.

We believe that in order to BREAK the cycle of poverty, disadvantaged children must have access to the best services available. They must receive the highest quality of care, have access to excellent medical services and receive a world-class education.

Our efforts will focus on delivering this type of exemplary treatment rather than providing care at a more simple subsistence level.

We are dedicated to developing a model of childcare that will be extended and replicated, one that will change the way we think about options for vulnerable children. We must change the way we practice development; as a result, the children themselves will finally be able to change their world.

Mission

Flying Kites

Orphaned Children
Remarkable Care
Tremendous Outcomes

We seek to raise the standards of care available to the world's poorest children. We are a non-profit organization that strives to give these children the tools they will need - education, imagination and resolution - to succeed in and contribute to a complex and changing world. We will prepare them to affect their societies through our emphasis on compassion, advocacy, and leadership.

History

Flying Kites was founded by Salve Regina University graduates Leila de Bruyne and Justine Axelsson, and their colleague Toby Storie-Pugh. de Bruyne and Axelsson spent their summer breaks from college volunteering with friends in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

Frustrated by the lack of resources available to children in this part of the country, they decided to look for land to build a children's home where they would have access to fresh water and open space.
Their goal was to provide numerous children with a quality education, a healthy diet, and a chance to experience childhood the way they feel every child deserves to.

Flying Kites Kinangop Children's Center opened its doors to its first five children in September 2007.

Program

Build a home: At full operating capacity, we aim to have 84 children living in six family houses. By living in small family houses, rather than conventional dormitories, the children will be raised in a setting that is as close to a family home environment as we can realistically provide. Each building will house no more than 14 children who will be cared for by a 'house mother.' Carefully chosen and intensively trained, these staff members give the children the same love, protection, and guidance as a traditional family.

Family Support/Outreach: When parents die in Kenya, it is often a grandparent or an aunt/uncle who take on the responsibility to care for orphaned children. This can put an overwhelming burden on what is often an already precarious financial situation. Many guardians submit applications to our Center because they can no longer afford to care for additional children. However, small grants (normally between $9 and $14 per month) can be sufficient to reduce this pressure and allow children to remain with their family.

Farming Support: Farming in Kinangop covers a wide range of practices with an equally broad spectrum of technical sophistication, however, access to knowledge and supply in the community, especially among the smallholders, is limited. We propose to improve access to farming innovations and technology.

Dissemination and Cooperation: We work in a sector that would benefit immensely from the sharing of ideas. In order to establish our model of childcare, we will hold an annual Childcare Forum to facilitate communication and networking between various organizations.

Volunteer: Flying Kites offers volunteer opportunities to those who wish to make the trip to Kenya to enrich the lives of our children with unique lessons, skills, and ideas.

My TURN: In recognizing the power of the ambitious student, we seek to raise awareness about the plight of orphaned children by reaching out to college and university students across the country and being the vehicle through which they can affect real change.

Impact

As of June 2009, Flying Kites Kinangop Children's Center is home to 16 orphaned children from the South Kinangop region of Kenya. Our 10 acre site includes a fresh water stream, farm land, livestock, a fish pond, a fruit orchard, nature walks, and a soccer field. Our children are happy, healthy, and flourishing in this environment.

We have a small temporary school where we currently educate an additional 35 children from the surrounding village.

When our vision for Flying Kites Kinangop Children's Center is completed, with family houses, staff houses, a learning center, a clinic, and more than 80 children, the level of care given to them on this site will be extraordinary.

Goals

Our goal for this year is to begin our capital fundraising campaign which includes the construction of our first family home.

Plan for the future: Our three-year goal is to be accredited to teach the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma program. The IB organization is one of the world’s leading providers of academic curricula. The IB takes a holistic approach to a child’s development, with physical education and community service playing important roles alongside academic curriculum. With an IB diploma, Flying Kites graduates will be able to study anywhere in the world. We would be the first children’s home to receive IB certification.

CEO

Leila de Bruyne and Justine Axelsson attended Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. While in college, Axelsson and de Bruyne spent every summer volunteering at an orphanage in Nairobi, and raised money for the orphanage during the school year. After graduation, they founded Flying Kites based on a new model of exemplary care.

Board

Leila de Bruyne, Justine Axelsson, Toby Storie-Pugh, Christian Allen, Jonathan Barr, Debra Curtis, Njoroge Mungai, Katharine Williamson, Benson Nderitu, and Rahab Mithithi.

Countries

Kenya, United States

States

Rhode Island

Contact

604 Thames Street

Newport, RI 02840

Phone: (401) 619-5919

http://www.flyingkitesglobal.org

EIN: 20-5946832


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