March 6, 2008  

Founder of Kenyan school to speak at Pellissippi State

This was a good week!

Learning has been going on well.

On Wednesday we had some interruptions due to the political skirmishes. The children had to leave early before the situation got worse. The teachers escorted the children home ensuring they all got home safe. Sad to say that the situation worsened in the evening and we thank God that none of our staff or children was caught up in the skirmishes.

—Lilian Nderitu, administrator, Grace School

from the Grace Journal, January 2008

The political situation seems to be improving with fewer killings. The two main political party leaders are having mediation talks led by his Excellency Mr. Koffi Annan. We continue to pray for the situation to improve.

—Lilian Nderitu, administrator, Grace School

from the Grace Journal, February 2008

The director of Grace School, the Rev. Samuel Wambugu, will speak at 11:50 a.m. March 14 in the Goins Auditorium on the Pellissippi Campus of Pellissippi State Technical Community College. The campus is on Hardin Valley Road.

The public is invited to hear Wambugu discuss the challenges of educating children in Limuru, Kenya, who face almost impossible circumstances: not only are they living in a war zone, but half of the 120 students are orphans, because their parents have died of AIDS.


Some of the 120 students who attend the Grace School in Limuru, Kenya, stand—and sit—for a group photo. School director Samuel Wambugu will speak in the Goins Auditorium at 11:50 a.m. March 14.

Wambugu is a Kenyan Presbyterian minister. He and his wife, Monica, founded Grace School in 1997 as a means of giving street children a safe place to go. They provide food and family assistance to most of the students there.

The Wambugus are in Knoxville for five weeks, updating supporters and raising funds for the school.

The couple came to Knoxville in 1999 in order for Samuel Wambugu to serve a yearlong pastoral counseling residency at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. They returned to Kenya with enough financial help to transform Grace School from a primitive two-room building to a modern campus.

Most of the funding used to run the first- through eighth-grade facility comes from Knoxville residents, 14 Knoxville churches, a local foundation and the East Tennessee Friends of Grace School.

The faculty are busy educating the poorest kids in the area, but they know the children in a refugee camp within sight of the school are in desperate need also. A school counselor spends three days a week in the refugee camp counseling the children, who are known as “internally displaced persons.”

“Most of the IDPs are really traumatized as the violence has been marked by very brutal killings,” school administrator Lilian Nderitu wrote to East Tennessee Friends of Grace School this month.

“Violence has claimed more than 800 lives in Kenya since the election, as mobs have blockaded roads, attacked people indiscriminately and burned down buildings with people locked inside.”

Kenya has been the scene of ethnic and political violence since its December presidential elections , which were strongly marked by tribalism. Limuru, a mountainous village situated about 30 miles west of Nairobi, is home to tea plantations and many slums. The town is faced with high unemployment and homelessness in addition to the violence, sickness and hunger.

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