Sophia is young student at Mackinnon Road Secondary School in rural Kenya. Three factors made her primary education very difficult: (1) she lived a long distance from school, so she spent a great deal of her time traveling back and forth each day; (2) she bore the primary responsibility for helping with household chores, so she had very little time for completing her studies; and (3) she had no electricity in her home, so by the time she was able to study, she had no source of light. Fortunately, Sophia attended Egu Primary School where she was able to participate in the Fueling Education program. Without that program, Sophia says, qualifying for secondary school would have been out of her reach.

Raphael Mangisi teaches at Egu Primary School. He oversees the Fueling Education program and is very familiar with the circumstances of participating students. He describes the challenge for girls in Kenya: “Culturally, girls do more house chores than boys. These duties are done in the evening after they come home from school. This makes them busy and tired. If they get time to study, it is very late at night, and most of the time there is no fuel for light.”

Raphael also explains that prior to the start of the Fueling Education program, not a single girl from Egu Primary qualified for the necessary sponsorship that would allow her to continue her education at the secondary level. All that has changed in four short years with the introduction of the Fueling Education program. In 2015, there will be more girls than boys from Egu Primary School completing secondary school. That is nothing short of a miracle.

Sophia is grateful for the Fueling Education program and the opportunity she now has to pursue additional education and a brighter future. Without Fueling Education, she would have had very little chance to achieve her dreams.