GC4C To Raise Funds For Kenyan Students

Vancouver — A charitable society formed by professional women primarily from Vancouver’s mining and exploration community is joining forces with a not-for-profit organization founded by a group of retired professional women to help aspiring students in Kenya’s impoverished Western Province.

The Global Change for Children Society (GC4C) has agreed to support the Kenya Education Fund (KEF), which provides financial aid to gifted students who can’t afford all or part of the tuition fees, room and board, books, supplies and uniform required to attend most secondary or post-secondary institutions in Kenya.

GC4C will kick off its 2010 fundraising efforts for KEF at the Mineral Exploration Roundup in Vancouver, Jan. 18-21. Along with “manning” a booth at the popular mining conference, the charitable society will host its annual fundraiser and silent auction at Smiley’s Public House, 911 West Pender St., at 5 PM, Jan. 20.

GC4C members have helped childen in developing countries on an informal basis for several years before attaining charitable status. More recently, directors Chafika Eddine, Joan McCorquodale, Nancy Curry, Sally Howson and Claudia Losie, together with CEO Preet Pall and other members, diligently researched worthwhile charities before deciding to support KEF.

They were greatly impressed by the low-overhead, hands-on approach of the fund, ably administered in the field by Kenyan liaison Marie Mackay, a retired Registered Nurse with extensive HIV/AIDS experience in Canada and Africa.

Mackay first visited Africa in the early 1990s, where she was inspired to “do something useful” to improve the conditions of the poor and disadvantaged. One of her first successful initiatives was raising funds to buy 200 goats (at $30 per head) for distribution to women with HIV/AIDS. KEF was later founded to help students pay school fees in Kenya’s Western Province, a rural area where more than 60% of the people are unemployed and barely survive on subsistence farming.

KEF supports only male students (other programs are already in place to help bright female students) and has a rigorous selection process. Only those with top grades in elementary school and Grade 8 examination scores are chosen. The progress of each selected student is also carefully and continually monitored.

Mackay says KEF expects more than a dozen of its students to graduate next year. GC4C’s goal is to help even more aspiring students graduate in the years ahead.

Details of KEF can be found at www.kenyaeducation.org. (All monies donated to KEF are designated solely for educational purposes as administration costs are raised by separate fundraising efforts.) GC4C has a website at www.gc4c.org.

Co-Chairman and president Chafika Eddine says members were excited when GC4C received charitable status last September. “We are thrilled with the support we are receiving from the mining industry. We feel so fortunate to be able to make a small positive difference.”