Doing Real Good

AmericaShare: How It Began... And How It Thrives!

Every story has a beginning. But not every organization begins with a story like this one.

It all began with one little boy. He was going from person to person in a Nairobi shopping centre with a note from his school headmaster. The note said that he was an orphan and needed to raise 700 shillings for a school uniform before he could come to class. He had only collected 100 shillings. The boy approached Micato’s Lorna Macleod. She read the note and handed him the 600 shillings — the equivalent of $15. Tears running down his face, the boy stood there for a moment, said “God bless you,” and dashed away.

At that moment Lorna realized that Micato was an ideal bridge between some of the poorest people on the planet, and some of the wealthiest, Micato travellers. So that bridge was given a name: AmericaShare, which has been helping to change lives for the better ever since.

That chance encounter was more than 30 years ago. Since then, AmericaShare has served as the non-profit arm of Micato Safaris. And through Lorna’s leadership as AmericaShare’s founding executive director, AmericaShare has created lasting change in the lives of children and women in Nairobi’s Mukuru slum, where Micato visitors can visit the Micato-AmericaShare Harambee Community Centre and see firsthand how innovative programming and community outreach are changing so many lives for the better.

Still going quite strong are Micato-AmericaShare’s flagship educational programmes: The School Sponsorship Programme matches extremely disadvantaged children with generous Micato travellers who sponsor the children to attend boarding school for the duration of their primary and high school years and sometimes into university; and the Micato One for One Commitment sends a child to school for every safari sold.

The state-of-the-art lending library at the Harambee Centre has served nearly a quarter million visitors. In 2018, thanks to the generosity of the Kovner Foundation – which funded a previous expansion of the library as well as its adjacent computer centre — the library expanded into an additional building, doubling its capacity to serve the thousands of eager students who line up daily for hours to study here. The AmericaShare team has also spearheaded the formation of lively reading clubs that have been gathering at the library and local schools.