Our Cura Board is Leading in Difficult Times
Hayden Bixby • April 29, 2020
Making Strategic Staffing Changes
It is with love and gratitude for 15 years of dedicated service that the Cura Board made the painful decision last week to shutter our Home for now and send two of our mothers into retirement a year earlier than scheduled. As you might imagine, this decision was not made lightly. Like many leaders across the world, our Board has had to adapt to radically altered financial projections, so that our central mission of ensuring a bright future for our 50 young people can survive Covid-19. Our Cura "kids" are mostly young adults now, and we continue to closely monitor their well-being while they are sheltering in place with their extended families. Saying goodbye and thank you to our wonderful housemothers is challenging, even when we know they live nearby and will stay in our lives. But, in Cura, we can do hard things with compassion and wisdom.
After a year of covid-pause, our girls are back to school and ready to rule! We are grateful beyond words to have been awarded $5,500 in scholarship funds to help ensure that their expenses are paid. For so many girls in Kenya, concerns over school fees interfere with academic success -- so this award not only pays the bills but also frees our girls to concentrate on doing their own best work. Check out The White Feather Foundation's announcement of the award here!
We are beyond thrilled to announce that our Safari Nights Auction is LIVE for browsing, and will begin in earnest on 12 March, at 4:30pmPST https://www.burningtorchinc.com/collections/safari-nights-auction
More information is on its way, but please mark your calendar and plan to jump in to the auction hosted by our wonderful friends at Burning Torch and Henson Studios... there will be rockstar items to bid on and lots of opportunity to help us make 2021 a hopeful and energized year for the kids at Cura. Stay tuned!
As Kenyan schools re-open and life starts the tentative path back to normalcy, our graduates are cautiously optimistic and boldly creative as they plan for their post-covid futures. Mercy, for example, sent me the above image when I asked after her small business... such joy! such empowerment! such confidence! She's spending her quarantine time creating bags like the one pictured below, and she's going to launch her Instagram site soon to start marketing her wares. Saying we feel proud is a massive understatement.
The New Year is getting our kids back on track... Above, some of our high school grads gather at JKR to lay the groundwork for their post-secondary studies. Simon is obviously doing his best to hold the attention of his siblings! Below, Cyrus looks thrilled to be getting fitted for his new uniform... and getting back to his Form 2 coursework. Given how seriously the virus is still ravaging the rest of the world, it's wonderful to have these glimpses of normalcy in our kids' lives! Thank you to so many of you who have helped us get these young people back to a place where they can scroll through social media and roll their eyes at us.
Our 2019 high school grads have waited so patiently to see where their futures will lead... and we're helping them take their first steps into dreaming up a post-covid world where they are free (and funded!) to pursue their career aspirations. They met recently with the social workers at John Kaheni Residence to discuss their options, and we're looking forward to seeing what inspiring things they'll do in 2021! Please do help fund their academic pursuits if/as you can at : https://creativevisions.networkforgood.com/projects/16422-creative-visions-fiscal-sponsorship-cura-o...
Our Cura families send their love and gratitude to all of you who helped make it possible to distribute food and supplies to keep them afloat during these past 7 Shelter-in-Place months. The sun is shining again in Austin's Kitchen Garden, too, and we're looking ahead to better days in 2021. Thank you, all, for your generosity and thoughtfulness!
As our Cura young people have grown up and into their boarding school positions or their post-secondary enrollments, our Home has emptied of the joyful noises of the 50 watoto who once lived there 24/7. Recognizing that fewer and fewer children would need to call this structure "home" over time, we began the process of managing the underutilization of the facility itself and converting the building to other uses. With covid hastening the placement of our kids into community home stays, the time came to formally turn over the building to new management. We are proud of our Board of Managers in Cura who made this big decision and supported a seamless transition so that our Home can have a new role to play in the village.
Our kids and their families are masked up and staying safe... and they've stayed healthy and fed because of YOU. Since May, we've been distributing food and staple items to the 37 households where our young people have been sheltering in place. YOU have helped us reach our goal and keep our promise to make these distributions through 2020! Our last event will happen next week, in preparation for households hunkering down for Christmas, and then we'll turn our attention to plans for the New Year. Thank you for all of your contributions, words of support and good thoughts for these young people and for the whole Cura community!