The foundation was founded in 2017 after my first trip to visit my daughter, Vassia, who was an investment banker living in Nairobi at the time. Along with my nephew and 3 daughters, we visited an orphanage with 230 orphans near the Methare slums where Vassia was visiting on weekends.

A few 12 yr. old girls proudly asked me if I wanted to see their room. I said “sure, let’s go.” There were 40 girls sleeping on bunk beds in one room. All the blankets were neatly folded at the base of their thin mattresses while their clothes were neatly folded in a giant stack in one corner of the room. I asked one of them if they ever fight over that stack of clothes, she happily declared, “No we never do, we all share!” I silently compared that with my daughters growing up in separate rooms and constantly fighting over clothes! I asked them what would happen if they didn’t fold their blanket neatly and place it at the foot of the bed. They said, “then we get punished, we have to do all the laundry for everyone by hand all week!”

They took me to the baby room which was a small windowless room that reeked of urine. It was stacked with short cribs filled with crying babies. On the floor were 2 or 3 workers who were desperately changing diapers and building a small mountain of dirty diapers that would need to also be washed by hand, since there are no washing machines anywhere. There was a disabled baby sleeping in one of the cribs with what looked like a severe spinal malformation. I wondered what the future of that baby would look like in a country with no resources to help them.

I visited the kitchen which consisted of a sink, and large kettle. There was no refrigerator and a big pile of wrapped, stale, left over donated bread rolls that were emptied on the ground by the door that were to be that night’s meal with a soup.

We intently watched as the children danced, sang, did back flips on concrete with no mats, and had massive smiles on their faces as they pulled us around to proudly share with us their living spaces and talk to us.

After the children put on an assembly style welcome for us, we spent the day interacting with the children. We brought 230 presents, including computers & cell phones for the older children, along with study materials & books for their high school entrance exams. We gave them out and talked to them. We were greatly impressed with the value the children placed on their education as opposed to underprivileged children in the US.

Oprah said it best, when she was criticized years ago. When she was questioned as to why she would prefer to open the “Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls” in South Africa as opposed to helping children in the south side of Chicago. She answered, when I would ask American children what they wanted and how I could help them, they would overwhelmingly answer, I want a new i-phone, or the latest $200 Michael Jordan basketball sneakers. When I would ask children in South Africa, they would always respond with, “I want an education, so I can work and help my family.” What most people might not know is that most African countries have no public schools. If there is no one to pay for your tuition or books, most children will never get any kind of an education and never even learn to read or write their own name.

That day at the orphanage was a turning point for me. Just like Oprah did, when I asked them how I could help them, they overwhelmingly answered, “I would love a uniform, shoes, or school bag, so I can go to school.” Occasionally some of the younger ones would answer with, slippers, a train, or a toy”. In a country with 45% unemployment rate, the emphasis on education being the difference between life and death is drilled into these children as the only way out of a life of despair.

Months later after I returned home, I got a call from my daughter. She told me about a child named Johnny, who she found on the street sniffing glue. When she told him in her broken Swahili, that he shouldn’t be doing that. He threw the glue on the ground, and told her I wouldn’t have to if I could just go to school. Johnny looked like he was 8 yrs. old, but we later found out he was older, he just looked younger from malnutrition. Vassiliki told him to gather his things and meet her there later. He said, I don’t have any “things”. She took him home, cleaned him up and while he played video games on her TV, she called boarding schools to see if someone can take him. Everyone said no, because parents of other children would complain if they let in street children. Finally, she called a boarding school further away, that wanted to refuse him, but she convinced the director to administer an IQ test instead, which Johnny passed with flying colors! They decided to take him and he has been there ever since.

Johnny’s story is a typical in these parts. He lived in a village a few hours from Nairobi, when his mother died. His father remarried to a woman who didn’t want the previous children. Therefore, John hitchhiked on the back of a dusty truck headed toward the big city. He had only been living on the streets 2 weeks when we found him. If we never found him in time, he might have been forced into prostitution, or possibly recruited by a violent gang to commit crimes.

There are countless other opportunities where we learned of difficult situations that some locals were going through. In one case when a young man who made a living as a driver, had his car stolen and had no way to make a living. We lent him money for a new car, and gave a small retail business for his wife to run. Other times, we pay for housing for slum girls and get them trained in data labeling, and be able to make a proud living for themselves.

Vassia now is CEO of a data labeling start up called, Africa AI. She has 1200 employees who do data labeling work. She finds large corporate clients and creates work for her teams. This is a perfect symbiotic relationship with the purpose of our foundation to get girls out of the slums and working. We find the girls, test them, and she trains them and gives them work so they can become self sufficient. The last thing you want is to take kids out of the slums, give them hope, but have to put them back in because there isn’t any work to give them.

This is a tiny, self run family foundation. We don’t raise any money, that would be a full time job in itself. I fund this by the profits of our family businesses. We can only help a few children a year get off the streets. Despite how small our reach is, my family will continue to self fund this effort and change the lives of more and more children though the years. That is the benefit of a small family owned effort like this. There is no waste. No one gets paid, and there is no overhead, just pure intentions for changing lives.

If you would like to join us for this effort in any capacity, feel free to call me directly. In the age of internet and cell phones, we encourage on ongoing relationship for you to directly speak to your child, and know exactly where your money is going!

Our motivation is to be a purely secular effort that transcends the proselytizing motive of religions. We don’t coerce the children to convert or believe what we believe, before we help them. There are no external ambitions here, just a heartfelt, sincere effort to create educational opportunities and improve the quality of life for indigent young women.

When you meet a child’s basic needs & educate them, it frees them from a desperate, & fearful struggle for survival, and life becomes a buoyant springboard for their dreams to materialize.
It’s not in the numbers, it’s in each one of us doing some small part in leaving the world a slightly better place than we found it. Even if these few children are all we can afford to create opportunity for; at least they will have their lives changed through feeling loved, given a place to live and have their needs taken care of.

These simple efforts are a 2 way street and are the definition of win win, yet the recipients are not the only ones who gain something. Just ask us about the first time Johnny thought of us as his only mothers and we got a Happy Mother’s Day card and a smiling picture of him and his new friends from the boarding school. Or when we called up a struggling family on Christmas day to tell them we are buying them a business to help them out of a tragic circumstance. There are some feelings that can’t be acquired any other way. We aspire to share the intrinsic, profound rewards these altruistic efforts bring to you, too!