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 working at Christian Chapels International and Tumaini International (faith-based organizations) involved church planting and non-profit management, overseeing the planting of three Churches, and 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 neighborhood. Besides the AIDS menace and poverty in the area, horror stories of child sexual exploitation and human 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 teenager 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 center. 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 80 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.
