Our History

2003

One Village at a Time was born in Addis Ababa in 2002. It came from an understanding that Susan Gross had while at an AIDS conference. Faced with the overwhelming dying in Africa from AIDS people feel overwhelmed and give up.However if one only has to be one small drop of rain great things can happen. Small amounts of money can make a huge difference, as little as $6.

2003

Returning to Africa 4 months later, Susan visited several communities in Kenya and found the most desperate need was first for food. And thus the first feeding program began. This program was run out of a shack in Siaya and fed 26 AIDS orphans for the year for $4000.  The program was somewhat cumbersome because the children ran miles from their school to the shack to eat. And they were often bullied because of their status or because they ate better than the local children.

2005

In 2005 One Village decided to move to Nambale Kenya and work directly with the schools to develop a community based, cost-sharing program. Working with a local community organizer 3 schools with a total population of 2500 children were incorporated into the Nambale Initiative. Because it was on site, because the parents shared in the cost the $4000 now fed almost all of the children. We were delighted.

2008

2008 brought more changes. It was clear that feeding the children was not enough and we strove to develop a working partnership with people on the ground to help us both feed the children and to teach micro-finance to the villagers. Without helping with self-empowerment through micro-finance the programs would never be self-sufficient. We found Kisumu Medical Educational Trust, which partners with KIVA. They were already doing outreach and micro-finance, but not working with schools. It was a partnership made in heaven and ratified in Kisumu and Boston. Monica Oguttu and her KMET team went to the schools to teach microfinance, record keeping and accountability and our budget grew to $20,000 for the year.

2010

We now operate with a budget of just over $25,000. We have 3 schools totaling over 4000 children (80% being fed their only meal of the day), 6oo successful microfinance loans, a nutrition program, reproductive health program, maternal child health program and a grateful village. Through resources like MAP International we are able to bring much needed medical supplies to our clinics.

2011

The Way Forward. We hope now to double our budget to include more villages and to also try to change the way medical records are kept in rural Kenya. Applying for grants we hope to supply small netbooks to community based outreach workers so that they can record data and send it via a zip drive or through the Internet to a centralized clinic where it can be kept and evaluated.