Dear KCEF friends and partners,
Over the past 17 years, our journey with KCEF has led us to a number of remarkable people making a surprising difference. Pastor Jenipher Jomo — founder of Gospel Victory Academy (GVA) in Nairobi’s Mathare slum — is one of those people.
Mathare is a very tough place where extraordinary strength is needed to survive let alone make a difference. It is a place of abject poverty and great suffering. Drug addiction, alcoholism, gang violence, and prostitution are everywhere, presenting ever present dangers to children.
Jenipher was born in western Kenya in 1970. She and her husband, who now have five children, including one who is severely disabled, moved to Mathare shortly after they married. Jenipher quickly became involved in church ministry there, serving a congregation that was a church by day and a nightclub by night.
After Jenipher was installed as pastor of that church, she was dismayed to encounter strong opposition, mostly because she is a woman. That was a very hard time for her, and, when the situation became untenable, she and her family felt forced to relocate to a part of Mathare where conditions are deplorable and the challenges are huge.
As Jenipher sought direction, a pastor who serves as her mentor and friend introduced her to a pastors fellowship group. There Jenipher found healing as well as a new calling. Through Life in Abundance (LIA), one of our partners, Jenipher began working with orphans and other especially vulnerable children. By engaging those children in purposeful activities and managing to enroll forty of them in a local private school, she was making a huge difference for them and their single parent families. Unfortunately, that school proved to be unsustainable in Mathare, and, when it moved away, children who were just learning to hope were left behind.
Feeling bereft, people in her new church and community urged Jenipher to start her own school for their children’s sake. Although she felt led to do so, she had no facilities, no resources, and no experience in running a school. Also, like the children who were left behind when their school pulled up stakes, she had suffered her own disappointments. She might well have been tempted to just give up.
But, when she found she could not shake her sense of being CALLED by God and the community, Jenipher founded Gospel Victory Academy with support from Life in Abundance and her fellow pastors. GVA began with 40 students, no real classrooms, and a couple of volunteer teachers. When we met Jenipher through Life in Abundance, we immediately saw not only GVA’s enormous need but vision and commitment that were not to be denied. Walking away would have been unconscionable, so, three years ago, GVA became our newest partner.
If we fast forward to 2023, we find that Gospel Victory Academy now has 150 students, new classrooms and nine qualified (and paid!) teachers. With students in preschool through grade 8, GVA has become a complete primary school and is an incredible beacon of light and hope in a very dark context.
There is much more work to be done and more challenges to meet. But the very existence of the school is a testimony to the vision and passion of one woman who feels called to serve “the least of these.”
KCEF has provided Gospel Victory Academy with support for new classrooms, desks, and teaching materials.
In addition, certified teachers have been recruited, and computers introduced to students and parents who had never seen one. As is the case with all our schools, GVA students receive two meals each day, addressing a crucial need for nutrition, health, and energy. Furthermore, we have just contracted with a Kenyan educational consulting firm to help GVA achieve higher levels of quality and student success.
What makes all this and more possible is your support, support which is making Pastor Jenipher’s dream a living, growing reality. We are humbled and grateful to be a part of what God is doing through GVA and to partner with such an amazing leader.
Thank you on behalf of Pastor Jenipher Jomo, Gospel Victory Academy’s 150 students and their families, and this neighborhood in the Mathare slum community. There will be further obstacles, hurdles and challenges, but we believe “the future is as bright as the promises of God.”
With many thanks,
Craig Hammon, KCEF Board Chair