THE AMANI STORY
After graduating from College, Maggie and William (co-founders of Amani) served as Pastors and Non-Profit leaders among low and middle-income communities in Kenya for ten years. Part of their mission work under a faith-based organization involved church planting and non-profit management, serving over 1500 AIDS orphans and their families. Maggie narrates, “For most of our time in ministry, we lived in a rented house in the rural town of Masii, South, Eastern Kenya, and woke up daily to the sight of vulnerable children in our neighbourhood. Besides the AIDS menace and poverty in the area, horror stories of child sexual exploitation and trafficking around the country triggered our desire to respond in tangible ways.”
In January 2016, the Lord moved us to start a children’s Bible club in our rented house. At the time, we were foster-parenting a three-year-old boy, born of a blind girl who had been sexually exploited. The Bible club attracted many children at a time when the community was having a deep cry for a holistic kids’ learning centre. In 2017, we worked alongside the community members to start AMANI School (Amani’ is Swahili for peace, but it can also be translated as Shalom- meaning human flourishing). Today, Amani has a population of 75 children. In March 2020, it was incorporated as a faith-based non-profit in Kenya and the US, whose primary purpose is to work for dignity, agency, voice and Justice for at-risk families through Education, Social-Economic Development, Health and Anti-human trafficking Advocacy.
Maggie & William Maweu
Co-Founders.
