Safari experiences led to gifts of hope
Sunday, January 30, 2000 - Reprinted with permission of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
By Mark Ellis
Telegram & Gazette Staff
 Roger L. Whiting is shown in Uganda with Justine Kasaggo's daughters, Doreen, left, and Daisy, scholarship recipients. |
PAXTON-- An unlikely conversation during a once-in-a-lifetime safari to Africa changed Roger L. Whiting's life four years ago.
More important, it changed the lives of dozens of young women in the East African countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, and it could help hundreds or even thousands more.
As a result of the conversation, Mr. Whiting has started a nonprofit organization called Growth Through Learning to pay for education for East African girls and young women whose families are not able to pay school fees.
It all started with a two-week tour of game preserves in Tanzania and Kenya in 1996.
"The animals were great, but it was the people that really interested me," Mr. Whiting said in an interview in the large, antique-adorned study of his Paxton home last week.
He said he was struck by the simplicity and beauty of the countries he visited, but even more so by the lack of opportunity for those who live there.
"We were traveling in a van and I tried to sit up front so I could talk to the driver," he said. "He would tell me about life in Kenya."
It is a life of financial hardship for most of the inhabitants. Because so few people are educated -- and because infrastructure is almost nonexistent -- foreign companies have been unwilling to invest in the region. The inhabitants of Kenya and neighboring Tanzania and Uganda have been left behind in the wave of prosperity that has spread through much of the world in the past quarter century.
And there is little chance for improvement unless the people become better educated, Mr. Whiting said. Unfortunately, there is no free public education, and many parents are too poor to pay fees for private schools. Girls, especially, remain mostly uneducated.
DIFFICULT TIMES
Mr. Whiting was most influenced on his trip by a young waitress at a tourist lodge in the Serengeti, a large plain popular with tourists because of its diverse wildlife. The waitress had come from a small village in Tanzania to find work. "She wanted to go to college," Mr. Whiting said, "but she couldn't because she had to work to send money home to her family." She told Mr. Whiting of the difficult lives she and others like her lead.
When Mr. Whiting returned to the United States after the safari, his experiences stayed with him. "I think it was such a culture shock to me to go into Third World countries. When I got back to the U.S. it took me a month or two to really absorb what I had seen and heard."
Once he did, he knew what he had to do. He had to help the young waitress go to school.
"In January, I decided I could afford to send this kid to school," he said. "Then I decided that if I started a nonprofit organization, I could send a lot of kids to school."
Six months later, Growth Through Learning Inc. was born. Less than a year after that, it was granted federal nonprofit status.
ORGANIZATION GROWING
 Pauline Wamuha from the Karoti Girls School in Kenya accepts a scholarship award from Roger L. Whiting, founder of a nonprofit organization Growth Through Learning Inc. |
Since then, the organization has grown slowly but steadily through Mr. Whiting's diligent efforts. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1998, the organization raised $8,315 and sent 12 young women to school, according to Mr. Whiting. The following year, it raised $17,211 and provided schooling for 32 students. This year, more than $21,000 has been raised, and Mr. Whiting predicts 50 young people will be helped.
"We are virtually doubling our fund raising every year," he said.
Because it has not yet raised $25,000 in a year, the organization has not had to file annual financial reports with the IRS. However, according to information provided by Mr. Whiting, more than 86 percent of all donated money has gone directly to scholarships. About 13 percent has paid the corporation's expenses, he said.
Mr. Whiting takes no salary and has no employees. "Ninety-nine percent of the work I do myself," he said. There are four scholarship coordinators in Africa who volunteer their time, matching girls with schools and doing paperwork. They receive reimbursement for expenses but no pay.
One of those women, Florence Nyamu of Kenya, said in an interview last week that times are difficult in East Africa. The regional economy has deteriorated over the past 20 years and the cost of education has increased greatly.
"Most parents have no employment, and the industries of coffee and tea that they depended on have also been affected, and there is little income," she said. "Consequently, many parents with more than one child cannot pay for schooling. A number of them choose to educate boys when the funds are limited. The girls are left out or married out early."
Mr. Whiting's organization has provided some much-needed help, she said. "The girls he is assisting would otherwise not have gone through secondary school. The demand is ever higher, and I now have more queries about the scholarships than I can manage."
A small, energetic man in his early 60s, Mr. Whiting is a semi-retired sales agent at Allmerica Financial. He spends most of his free time working to build the organization.
The best part of the work, he said, is seeing the difference that education makes in the lives of those being helped. For example, Grace Nantale, a young woman who received a scholarship to finish her schooling at Mount St. Mary's College (secondary school) in Uganda, wrote to Mr. Whiting last fall: "I do not know what words to use to express my excitement about the scholarship you gave me."
"I lost both of my parents," she said. "My mother died when I was 8 years old and my father when I was 17 years old. I was born in a very poor family that, even when my father was still alive, I used to beg for my school fees. I have even, at times, taken up very dirty jobs in search of my school fees, like carrying garbage from the main dumping pit."
Ms. Nantale said she plans to make the most of her education and someday help pay to send other poor children to school.
"I'll do this by either paying for these children myself or by making contributions to organizations like Growth Through Learning, so that it can reach the children wherever they are." she said. "They don't have to be Ugandans or Africans."
Mr. Whiting said there are many, many more girls and young women like Ms. Nantale in East Africa who need just a little help to make their lives better.
"There's no end game to this," he said. "One of my board members asked the other day, 'What's the end game? What's the target?' I said, 'Well, 20 million more kids and we'll have it made.'"
Last modified: May 11, 2003, 19:26 EDT