Update on CES: New Foundation Support

CES has a new corporate supporter, a charitable foundation called GTO, that is part of the international engineering and environmental firm WSP. They have generously committed to supporting five of our boarding secondary school students and funding two of our university partial scholarships.

The origin of this collaboration dates back to the early days of CES, driven by a shared mission to support young people in Africa affected by HIV. In the early 2000s, employees at the Johannesburg office of the international engineering firm Golder Associates (which later merged with WSP) recognized the need to assist children affected by the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. This led to the creation of the Golder Trust for Orphans, an employee-funded initiative dedicated to supporting grassroots organizations across southern Africa. Following Golder’s merger with another engineering firm, WSP, the Trust was renamed GTO.

Jon Howcroft of Cape Town, South Africa representing GTO, made a site visit to learn more about CES. He’s on the left, with CES alumna Christine Robby, CES Alumni Chair Juma Nyongesa, and CES Kenya Patron Malik Khaemba – on the grounds of Bishop Sulemeti Secondary School, a longtime partner with CES (and where Juma now works as a teacher).

CES approached GTO with a funding application in February 2023. They conducted thorough due diligence on CES, which included a site visit to our Kakamega, Kenya operations by GTO board member Jon Howcroft from Cape Town. Our administrative assistant, Sarah Nabongo, and CES Kenya Patron Malik Khaemba, coordinated Jon's visit, enabling him to meet with several principals, teachers, and some of our Alumni.

Beyond the financial support for our students, our collaboration with GTO offers two other facets: 

Beyond the financial support for our students, our collaboration with GTO allows CES Alumni studying at a Kenyan university, to be mentored by professionals in fields like engineering and environmental science. This aligns perfectly with the interests and aspirations of our students.

In addition, WSP's policy of regularly updating their employees' computers presents a unique opportunity for us. We are exploring ways to acquire some of these refurbished, wiped-clean computers for our university students, which will be a huge help to them in completing school assignments.

We’ll keep you updated on the evolving partnership between GTO and CES.