Flying Kites: Orphaned Children, Remarkable Care, Tremendous Outcomes

Flying Kites seeks 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.

Flying Kites is an organization concerned with helping vulnerable children around the world. Currently, we are building a home for abandoned, abused and orphaned children in Kenya. Located at the foot of the Aberdares Mountains, our new ten-acre farm has become home to many children in need.

As an organization providing for children from such desperate circumstances, we define ourselves by the level of care we deliver. As an organization that recognizes the larger structural inequalities that create such desperate circumstances, we engage the local and global communities.

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We strive to achieve:

1. Tremendous Care

To provide orphaned children with a home and an exceptional education

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2. Community Outreach

To work in partnership with our local neighbors to strengthen the community

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3. Global Collaboration

To foster collaboration and cooperation between non-profit organizations, governmental agencies and businesses

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4. Awareness and Action

To raise awareness about the crises facing orphaned children and to facilitate thoughtful action

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Orphaned Children

It is estimated that every 14 seconds a child is orphaned in sub-Saharan Africa. In poor countries such as Kenya, very few social services exist to care for these children. Many end up living on the streets, or squeezed into overcrowded orphanages in the city slums.

These facilities are often decrepit buildings that lack basic amenities such as running water, toilets, and electricity. The children living there do not have enough to eat and communicable diseases are rife. They sleep in dirty clothes on cold floors in cramped rooms. Despite these adversities, the children are desperate for an education and eager to learn.

Although public elementary education in Kenya is free, most schools are understaffed and overcrowded. With up to 130 students per classroom and few resources, it is not surprising that less than 50% of students go on to high school, and less than 3% attend college.

Many current approaches to the orphan crisis, reactive in nature, are inherently limited and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Given a fair chance, these children will fight their way out of this misery.

At Flying Kites, this chance begins with remarkable care.

Remarkable Care

The Flying Kites vision of providing remarkable care demands that we get the basics right. Our site in the Aberdares Mountains provides clean water, fresh air, fertile farmland, nutritious food and abundant space where the children can play.

Our children have lost their families. The Flying Kites community is made up of individual houses that accommodate fourteen children and two "mamas". This creates a loving and nurturing environment, and gives the children a place to call home.

Happy, healthy children are ready to learn. Our onsite school, choice of curriculum and the quality of our teaching staff provide these children with the education they need to transform their lives.

Our costs are low. This rural setting provides much for free: fruit from the orchard, water from the mountain spring, and the simple joys of growing up in the countryside. Although plans for the individual houses are innovative, intelligent design need not be expensive. By using local materials and building techniques, our houses are no more expensive per square foot than institutional facilities.

With these critical elements in place, the scene is now set for tremendous outcomes.

Tremendous Outcomes

We start from the premise that every child can succeed. We aim to create an environment of expectation where such success is the norm, and not the exception.

Our children will be prepared to lead diverse and complex lives as members of families and as citizens of their country. They will achieve their highest potential, be tolerant and understanding, respect themselves as well as others, and be responsible custodians of the environment.

Through our emphasis on compassion, advocacy and leadership, we hope our children will champion causes of social justice. In our experience, adults who have endured the privations of orphanhood often have a desire to ensure that future generations do not have to face these same hardships. Our goal is to foster this desire in our children by fusing the drive to help those in need with the tools necessary to make their voices and actions count. Flying Kites graduates will be positioned to have an impact on the world greatly beyond their numbers.