Menlo Park Girls Help Build School in Kenya

When Rebecca Bloom decided to begin coaching her adolescent daughter’s basketball team in Menlo Park, it is likely she did not know her team would go on to change the lives of hundreds of young African women.

But under the guidance of Bloom, the girl’s hard work, caring and compassion raised between $30,000 to $40,000 which was used to help build a school for underprivileged teenage girls in the African country Kenya.

The journey began when Bloom, a Menlo Park resident, met Margo McAuliffe in the spring of 2007. McAuliffe was speaking at a neighborhood event to raise awareness for her foundation , which is a charity dedicated to fundraising to build a girls high school for an impoverished community in the country’s Naivasha District.

McAuliffe, a retired math teacher from Menlo-Atherton High School, founded the charity after visiting the community in the country’s southwestern region and was struck by its need for assistance, particularly in the realm of education.

She, with the help of a local Catholic parish priest named Father Daniel Kiriti, began the quest to raise money for the construction of an all girl high school. The need for which was catalyzed by a local decision to phase girls out of the co-ed Catholic school because of several teen pregnancies. 

Bloom was immediately struck by the power of McAuliffe’s cause, and decided to use her connection as an opportunity to teach her girls a lesson that spanned far beyond the boundaries of a hardwood basketball court.

“I understand how hard kids have to work today,” said Bloom. “But I want them to also look up to see the bigger picture, and how they may positively impact those around them.”

During that summer Bloom inspired her daughter Samantha and the rest of the team to start a pledge drive, drawing from the charity of Menlo Park residents, which awarded their accomplishments on the basketball court and money collected would be donated to the Kenya Help foundation. The summer-long drive, called Hoop-A-Thon, raised $13,000.

Such an overwhelming outpouring of monetary support shocked even McAuliffe.

“I about fell out of my chair,” said McAuliffe, when she heard how much money the girls had raised.

But the girls did not stop there. The following years they went on to sell homemade arts and crafts such as bracelets, wallets, pendants, hand painted vases and other projects to raise proceeds for the school’s construction.

In a span of three years, the girls raised almost $40,000, according to McAuliffe. The money went directly toward completing the construction of St. Francis Xavier Girls Secondary School, which opened its doors to the inaugural class of 17 students in 2007.

Some of the money raised by the team went toward the construction of a basketball court on the school campus. But as soccer is far and away Kenya’s most popular sport, most of the local girls were not familiar with how to play basketball.

So Bloom’s team directed, filmed and edited a 45-minute long instructional video about how to play the game, and sent it to their sisters overseas.

“It was really exciting to do,” said Vanessa Wijaya, who was on the girl’s team and contributed to the video’s creation. “It was funny, but it was also a long and tedious process.”

Wijaya, 15, said the girls in Kenya sent letters back to the team expressing their appreciation for the video, and how much they enjoyed learning about American culture.  And she said the correspondence helped the girls from Menlo Park learn lessons about appreciating diversity.

“The letters we get from them show how different they are, culturally and socially,” she said.

Wijaya said she gained a respect for the commitment that the girls from Naivasha show to their education.

“They don’t want to leave school,” she said.

Bloom echoed that sentiment, and said the impact was felt throughout the team when they were told by McAuliffe that the girls from Naivasha have a much longer school day, get fewer breaks and also clean their own classrooms after using them.

“There is no way it can’t deepen them once they learn that,” said Bloom.

As a sign of the team’s appreciation, the girls combined their artistic talents to paint a mural of the African countryside to be hung at the school. The girls all contributed to its creation, and presented it as a gift to Father Kiriti during a visit to the US last fall.

Now the girls are working toward reestablishing a connection with their friends in Kenya, despite the many distractions of high school. 

Wijaya, a sophomore at Menlo-Atherton High School, said she and a few of the original girls from the team are beginning a letter writing club at the high school in hopes it could entice younger girls to get involved in the Kenya Help project.

McAuliffe, whose foundation has raised more than $1 million over a nearly five year span, said the impact of the friendship of the Menlo Park girls has brightened the lives of those in Kenya.  St. Francis Xavier Girls Secondary School currently has about 270 students enrolled, and McAuliffe said she expects it will soon reach its capacity of 320 girls.

“It has been wonderful for us financially, and it was been wonderful for the girls at Saint Francis,” she said. “The girls there are so touched to think that girls in America care about them, because sometimes they feel like no one cares about them.”

Bloom could not be more proud of her team, and the way they turned their energy and artistic ability into a project that changed the life of their friends in Kenya.

“This all came from the passion the girls had,” said Bloom. “It’s nice to give them a chance to see that you can love something, and be great at it, and do something great with it.”