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Students at the Tenderfeet School in Nairobi, Kenya are looking forward to their first gym class |
Collette Vacations has sent a group of employees and U.S. travel professionals on a tour that visits the Tenderfeet Education Center, located outside Nairobi in Kenya, which has been selected as a recipient of funding from the company’s philanthropic effort, the Collette Foundation. The Collette Foundation, now in its third year, helps improve the quality of life of children in countries that Collette visits around the world. The Collette Foundation is employee-driven and the Kenya trip is the culmination of months of work by employees at Collette’s Rhode Island headquarters.
"The Kenya Team researched viable projects that would be a good match for the Collette Foundation—and there were many in Kenya—but in the end chose to support Tenderfeet Education Center," said Carol Wright, accounting administrator and one of the team leaders for the Collette Foundation’s Kenya initiatives. "We felt we could assist the 70 or so children of the Center, most of whom were orphaned, many by AIDS, and who had no access to education.”
Along with their own personal luggage, Collette employees Bill Dzuira, executive vice president of information technology; Lisa Corrente, senior account executive; Lucas Bialecki, district sales manager; and Jay Fehan, district sales manager arrived bearing physical education, or PE, packs and will personally deliver them to each student when they tour the school on Friday, November 6.
The PE packs consist of sneakers, socks, shorts, a t-shirt and personal note packaged in a back pack. The packs will allow the Tenderfeet students to participate in gym class. In Kenya, without the proper PE uniform, a school cannot hold physical education class.
Tenderfeet Education Center was founded in 2000 by Margaret Nyabuto and currently the school has two locations. The Collette Foundation is working with Lahash International, a grassroots partnership that operates in East Africa, to build a central site for Tenderfeet where all students will attend school in the same location. To date, the land purchase has been made with construction to commence by year’s end. The Collette Foundation also provides funding for the nutrition program, providing these students with two meals per day.
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