Jacinta’s Story
Written by Kim Rosen
Yesterday, Jacinta, Executive Director of the S.H.E. Fund Kenya, took Mercy to enroll in Nursing College, a two-day journey which included buying books and nursing uniforms on the way, and standing in line for 12 hours to get housing and pay tuition.
Earlier that week, she sent funds to all S.H.E. students for their next semester in school. On Friday she will go with Linah to Teachers college, then take Joy shopping for all her needs and deliver her to a different Nursing program in a distant part of Kenya.
I had no idea when I received a desperate email from Jacinta in 2010 asking me to find the money for her college education, that she would be the inspiration for the S.H.E. College Fund. I also had no idea that it had been her mother, two years earlier, who had taken me aside in a remote village in the Great Rift Valley, to beg me to help her daughter who was living at the Safe House. The eldest of her 10 children, this daughter was her only hope.
At the time Jacinta’s mother was living in a mud hut with her other children, working single-handedly as a farmer to feed her family. It was only several years later, well after I was engaged in funding Jacinta, that I realized the connection between them and that by some mystery and grace I was fulfilling a request I had no idea I could respond to!
Jacinta and her mother circa 2014
Jacinta and her mother, 2025
I had never raised funds for anything but my own rent. I had no idea if I could do it, but thanks to the generosity of my friends, we managed to put Jacinta through college, then university. In 2015, she graduated with a 4-year degree in business. She was the only Maasai woman in her graduating class of hundreds.
Today, Jacinta runs the S.H.E. Fund in Kenya. She is the “big sister” to all the girls to whom the fund grants scholarships, helping them find the right college, making sure all their needs are met, checking up on them by phone, visiting them at school, helping them buy computers or find housing, and communicating with their professors. She is also part way through achieving her license as a CPA. The S.H.E. College Fund is changing the world one visionary student at a time. Jacinta was the first.
“I am grateful every day to work with the S.H.E. team! You're amazing, caring, loving and so passionate to help these amazing souls who are ready to change the world.”
- Jacinta
