Earlier this month, I flew back to Kenya for a quick visit. Although I regularly work with our organizational partners and our Kenyan team from a distance, so much more can be accomplished face to face: conversations over Kenyan tea, chats while weaving in and out of traffic, time spent examining The Shoe That Grows together, and laughter over my broken attempts at Swahili.

In my short time in Nairobi, I met with six of our organizational partners. Part of my goal was to connect with these leaders, but mostly I wanted to learn as much as I could from them. I had prepared a list of questions, but naturally, each question led the conversation in multiple directions.

After six enlightening conversations, I understood even more about the impact of a pair of shoes. The big picture stays the same—protection, relief from financial burden, dignity and self-confidence—but zooming in on how The Shoe That Grows supports each partner's mission reveals just how many specific reasons kids need them.

Furaha Community Foundation

Furaha Community Foundation works in the low-income settlements around Nairobi, and what sets it apart is its focus on the youngest kids. Rather than investing in the oldest kids—the ones an organization can bank its hope on, the ones most likely to finish school and come back to help their families—Furaha goes after the youngest. They want kids supported in the school system early, before the barriers have a chance to pile up and push them back out.

One of those barriers is uniforms. Furaha runs its own in-house tailoring program, subsidizing full uniform sets down to a fraction of the normal cost, because a family that can't afford a uniform is a family whose kid doesn't go to school. A pair of The Shoe That Grows completes the uniform, removing one more barrier.

Furaha started out trying to solve every problem at once, focusing on families and their economic situations. It has since shifted its efforts to education, understanding that removing barriers and keeping kids in school—beginning at the youngest age—will have a lasting effect on the future of the communities it serves.

Organization for Sustainable Development Africa

Organization for Sustainable Development Africa (OSDA) works in Mandera, Kenya's second-poorest county. In other parts of Kenya, kids often show up to school barefoot, and a pair of shoes protects them on their daily walk. In Mandera County, the ground gets so hot that walking on it without footwear is impossible.

Other barriers stack up for these kids. Families have to walk a long way just to get water. Food is scarce. Instructional materials are inadequate. But in this corner of Kenya, near the border, the cost of a kid missing school isn't just falling behind. A child at home is more likely to be pulled into trafficking or recruited by extremist groups. Drugs pass across the border. Girls as young as 11 are married off to militants. To help shield kids from these outcomes, there is a desperation to keep them in school.

A pair of shoes lets kids cross the searing ground to get to class. It removes one barrier and means one less reason for a kid to stay home, where the real danger starts.

Sustainable Organic Farming and Development Initiative

Sustainable Organic Farming and Development Initiative (SOFDI) works across farming communities in Kakamega and Vihiga in Western Kenya, and its whole model is built around root causes: sustainable agriculture, clean water, and hygiene and sanitation education.

But along the way, SOFDI kept running into jiggers—parasites that burrow into bare feet and, left untreated, cause serious infection and disability. The organization is now actively working to eradicate them in the communities it serves, and it has reached the same conclusion anyone doing that work eventually does: Footwear is one of the biggest tools for prevention.

OneChild

OneChild is an organization that seeks out the “hard.” The communities it works with are spread across Kenya and experience “hard” in many different ways, so OneChild tries to meet the most pressing needs at any given time. Every month, the team works from a set budget across all their centers. And every month, they have to decide which needs get funded and which don't. If they buy sanitary pads for the girls, there may be no money for uniforms or shoes. If they buy school supplies, they may not be able to provide hygiene kits.

They were blunt about what happens when the money runs out: Needs go unmet. And when too many unmet needs stack up on a kid, that kid stops coming to school.

They were just as direct about what a partnership like ours actually does for them. It's not just shoes on feet; it's one line item permanently off their monthly spreadsheet, freeing up real money for whatever is most urgent next. A removed barrier isn't just a removed barrier. It's budget flexibility for five other barriers.

Jaguar Foundation

Jaguar Youth Empowerment Foundation (JYEF) works in a community next to one of Kenya's largest dump sites, where the ground is riddled with needles and medical waste. It's no place for bare feet.

But it's not just the trash from the dump. It's the latrines—or rather, the lack of them. There are no public bathrooms in this community except at the local pubs. So a kid who needs to use the bathroom before school has to go there, pay for the privilege, and do it in a space where men who've been drinking all night are also present. Jaguar is working to change that at the source, installing bathrooms and showers directly at its schools so kids have a genuinely safe option that doesn't require walking into a pub at seven in the morning.

As Jaguar works to make its classrooms the best, safest place for kids to be, shoes matter here for the most literal reason: There is medical waste on the ground between a kid's house and school.

International Relief for Africa

International Relief for Africa (IRFA) works with semi-nomadic families. For their kids, education is the way to choose something other than a life of herding. Get a kid through school, and they get a shot at options their parents didn't have. IRFA has seen this happen, and I heard success stories of students who made it through school and are now enrolled at universities, with opportunities wide open.

IRFA provides one meal a day at its schools, where thousands of kids show up just to eat. The practical problem is the walk. Many of these kids cover 6 to 7 kilometers of harsh, rocky terrain just to get to class. Right now, a good number of them make that walk in shoes cut from old tires, which aren't built for 6 kilometers of rock, day after day. A pair of The Shoe That Grows is.

What I brought home

At Because International, when we talk about the impact of The Shoe That Grows, we boil it down to three things: providing protection, reducing financial barriers and fostering self-confidence. But after six meetings with organizations working to give kids better access to education, I got to see how those three areas play out differently depending on which corner of Kenya you're standing in.

The need for protection looked like ground too hot to walk on barefoot in Mandera. It looked like jiggers burrowing into feet in Kakamega and Vihiga. It looked like needles and waste from one of Kenya's largest dump sites, a few hundred meters from a classroom. Same category, very different realities.

Financial barriers looked like an organization's monthly ledger, where a shoe removed from the list is money freed up for another pressing need. They looked like an organization running its own tailoring program to make uniforms affordable.

Struggles with self-confidence and dignity showed up in subtler ways, but they were woven through our conversations, especially about teens: torn uniforms, no shoes, the shame of missing school during a girl's period. All of them are barriers that keep kids from attending school and being fully present there.

Six conversations. Many, many reasons The Shoe That Grows makes an impact in communities all over Kenya. And renewed motivation to keep connecting with organizations working hard to give students every opportunity to receive a good education.

August Impact Dashboard