Holding Out Hope: How a GTL Scholarship Changes Lives

Here in the West, it’s hard for us to imagine the lives of the 210 girls sponsored by GTL. We don’t know much about Africa, and we give little thought to the real conditions of life for five out of seven people in the world.

Every year, GTL staff and board members go to East Africa to interview our girls and gather their stories. We try to bring hope to bright girls with dim prospects, their lives blighted by poverty or losing a parent. The stories we gather show the enormous effect of a GTL scholarship on a girl’s future and on her whole family.   

Jane Gachanja, 18, from Kenya, is one of ten children, and her family often goes to bed hungry. Before GTL sponsored her, her father had to choose between paying her school fees and paying a fee to allow her mother to come home from hospital. More than anything, Jane wanted her mother back home, so she told her father to pay the hospital fee. She thought she had lost forever any chance at secondary education. She was sent home repeatedly for non-payment of fees, and her work started to suffer.

Then, with the help of your donations, GTL stepped in, and we are paying for her school fees. Now, Jane is doing great at her studies again, and has new hope. She is in the top 25% of her class, but wants to be in the top three, and to become a surgeon “to rescue other people’s lives.”

A GTL scholarship means that a girl doesn’t have to worry any more about being sent home from school for non-payment of fees. It helps her focus on her school work and on achieving her dreams. It frees her family to provide better for their other children. In turn, her education benefits her own children and her whole community. That’s a lot of change for $600 a year.

We take for granted our free secondary education, our running water and electricity, our roads and books and clothes. Across East Africa, hundreds of GTL girls like Jane are rising with the dawn, studying sixteen hours a day and praying for a better future. They know the true worth of an education. Please help us to help them.