Learning is coming alive at Guadalupe Primary School in Mashuuru, Kenya with the support of Ustawi Global. Nick Salmon spent a week in Mashuuru, supporting our Ustawi Kenya team during their second survey period in October 2023. While the team returned to interview more than 100 households, Nick spent long days with young people and educators at Guadalupe Primary School. Kelvin Kiptum had just won the Chicago Marathon in a record time of 2:00:35, a moment of pride for all Kenyans. We quickly created a chart mapping his pace at different intervals of the race, and compared that to the fastest young runners in the room.

But we also discovered that access to an affordable source of healthy food was an annual challenge. The 5-acre site of the school includes a durable fence, high enough to keep giraffes and zebras from eating the vegetation on the campus. How might we create a vegetable garden that could provide midday meals for young people, but also be a place of learning science, math, geography, English, and Kiswahili?

Six months later, when we returned to the campus, something even better was emerging. A community garden filled with young people and elders was underway. Access to water, a sturdy fence, and rich soil were coming alive, all of which came from a simple question, “How might we achieve collective flourishing?”