Orma Scholarship Fund

The Orma are a community of herdsmen living in the arid interior of Kenya. Orma settle in small villages along the Galole River where they are able to dig wells in the river to get water for themselves and for their animals. However, because of dry conditions water does not always last long, even near the river. Every ten years the Orma livestock are wiped out because of drought. In spite of this, the Orma have held on to their traditional ways of life, which has benefited the community in some ways by allowing them to maintain a simpler lifestyle. But as a result they have also been marginalized in terms schooling. There are only a few elementary schools in the area, and not a single secondary school.

A Muslim community, the Orma have been preached to by Christian missionaries for over 40 years. They still don't have a church, which suggests that a new approach to evangelism is necessary. The Africa Inland Church (AIC) has begun a program of evangelizing through education, focusing on providing a secondary school for intelligent Orma students from poor families who would not otherwise have a chance to go on to high school.

With the assistance of WWCS, an Orma Scholarship Program has been established for children who are identified as good candidates for secondary education. There are currently 13 boys and two girls attending school on the scholarship, but WWCS and the AIC want to increase this number as soon as funds become available. The hope is that over the period of four years in the school these young people will be influenced by the Gospel and their lives changed. Some of those who have completed secondary school have become believers two are now with Wycliffe Bible Translators, translating the Bible into the Orma language.

$350 pays for one year of education for an Orma student. $100 pays one month's salary for one teacher in the Orma school.

Act now!