Wayne Jacobsen

If you’ve ever wanted to help with people so poor and so excluded from resources they cannot help themselves, this is it. Bad charity gives us a lot of reasons NOT to give, but this project in Pokot ticks all the right boxes for me.

• The need is genuine. This is one of the truly tragic places left in the earth with great need and little aid from government or nonprofits from anywhere in the world. It is remote and the need is so great many turn away overwhelmed. It is truly one of the uttermost parts of the earth where drought, malnutrition, and lack of hygiene are killing off thousands of people.
• Every dime you send goes to the need in Pokot. We do not take out any administrative or transactional fees. All that is paid for by Lifestream.
• It is furthering the Gospel in a non-coersive way. The help is being given freely, but with it the opportunity to come to know the Living Jesus for those who are interested. And there are so many interested, because they used to pray to their ancestors, but their ancestors did not come to help them. You and our friends in Kitale helped them.
• We are not creating an ongoing dependency on western aid, but intentionally helping them no longer need it. This is not giving someone a fish, but teaching them how to fish and supplying them with the nets and boat so they can actually do it.
• The Pokot people are deeply involved and vested in each phase of this project. Resources from us are matched 50/50 with sweat equity from the people there so that they come to “own” it. These people already began to clear land in advance of our saying we’d help provide irrigation in hopes that God would provide some way.

Please don’t let any of that put you under a load of guilt. I say this so people who are normally cynical about these kinds of needs would look a bit deeper. We do not need and do not want any guilt-driven dollars to help here. We are looking for generous hearts who have some extra resource and upon hearing of the need, a growing desire to help the people of Pokot.

This week ChristianityToday.com ran an article about World Vision having a difficult time raising money to help with the desperate need in Turkana.  It was called, Why Christians Should Stop Caring About So Many Causes. Turkana is the county right next to Pokot, with the same challenges we have faced there. Here’s a brief excerpt from that article:

Many people come here and take pictures,” the elder told me as he leaned on his walking stick, his slender frame swathed in heavy cloth despite the heat. “Then they go away and never help.”  This is the moment that haunts me from my recent visit to Turkana, a region in northwestern Kenya crippled by drought and sliding inexorably into widespread hunger.

This article made me all the more grateful for the generosity of this audience and those at The God Journey for helping us send over $1.3 million to that region in the last nine years.We began after the disputed election brought tribal violence to that region leaving hundreds of children homeless and in need of care.  It has continued in recent years as people we know there discovered the great need in Pokot and have been helping them with water, food, education, medical needs, and income generation. We are helping on a five-year plan to create sustainable economies in this very desperate regions of the world.  Our hope is to continue to send them $10,000 per month for another 42 months, but there is still more that’s needed to give them the tools to determine their own future.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been asked by the villagers in Pokot if we can help them begin agricultural projects near the wells we drilled for them a couple of hears ago. There is simply no food to go around and they want to put in the irrigation infrastructure to help raise their first crops. Just since putting the need out last week, we have already received enough to do the first well as a prototype to do five others.  I am amazed and blessed and want to see if we can find enough ($150,000) to do all six over the next year or two. That will provide them with a steady source of food and they will look to expand it in years to come.

If you have it on your heart to help these Kenyan people suffering under such a huge strain, you can direct it through Lifestream as contributions are tax-deductible in the US.  As always, every dollar you send goes to the need in Kenya.  We do not (nor do they) take out any administrative or money transfer fees. Please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1  •  Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Thank you in advance on behalf of the people of Pokot for your gifts and prayers for them.

I still get a bit freaked when I see that 50% of our expenses last year went to help people in Kenya and South Africa. That’s not how we designed Lifestream to function, but God had plans that went way beyond our own.

If you haven’t followed this saga over the past decade or so, it began with a set of relationships both those I had at home who could afford to help, and with Kenyans abroad who needed help. Over the last 8 years we have channeled over 1.3 million dollars to help our friends in Kitale with orphanage, school, medical expenses, and micro-finance loans and their friends in Pokot with a medical clinic, food, water (drilling six wells), schools, coaching, and business loans. Our goal has been to help tribespeople whose cattle-drive and nomadic economy was wiped out by a prolonged drought. We continue to send $10,000 per month over five years to help when no one else would. I am overwhelmed and grateful that this much generosity would flow through our little corner of the web.  Who would have thought?

We now have an opportunity to help them add some agriculture to their community by helping them plant crops near the wells we drilled for them. We’re going to start with one, of the six they’d like to have over the next few years.  They will serve 2-7 acres with irrigation and allow them to begin to grow their own crops. In hope and faith they’ve already begun to clear the land. Each agricultural enterprise will cost about $25,000 US and I’m curious if there is anyone out there who would like to help us do that?

Here’s what they wrote me:

We have been praying so much concerning our brothers in North Pokot on how we can get simple irrigation system to cover two acres of land. The starvation over there is high,and they have been affected with outbreaks of diseases due to lack nutritional value in their food. Some already tried farming especially those who stay around the wells to plant little plantation but because of drought the cops dried up. Sometime when we go there we cannot hold the tears to see the starvation but the monthly support of food donation it has really saved their life, especially old aged and breastfeeding moms but the rest are in great distress. The coaches and the committees of Ngetut village where we proposed to have first irrigation. Surprisingly they have started clearing some parts of the bush, preparing for irrigation. Thomas tried to stop till we get a cheaper plan, but they told they are doing it in faith, that one time God will provide. This people are really having great faith.

God is good. He recently  connected us with one good man who is an expert in fixing simple irrigation system and he has been installing this irrigation system to the farmers in dry areas like Maasai land and some parts of Busi, so we got his contact and visited him. He was installing to one group of women in Succo, as you may see in some pictures (see above). We invited him in our office and we shared with him at large concerning North Pokot and simple irrigation. He gave us the quotation and sketch for two acres.

The man who will be supervising the work recently found them a solar panel from one of the NGOs that work closely with Red Cross.  It has the capacity of generating enough water to cover 7 acres. So in the future they will be extending to the capacity of seven acres as God provides. You can see from the picture above that they plan a very rudimentary water tower with pipes and valves to help irrigate the land when the rains don’t come. They will be doing the work as our friends from Kitale will be coaching them.

What amazes me about this project is that none of these funds benefit those in Kitale who are doing so much work on behalf of those in Pokot. Who does that? Who lets so much money flow through their hands when their needs are great as well, but they have compassion for the people in Pokot whose needs are even greater.

So I am coming to the readers of this site once again. Any amount you can send will be helpful. I am always amazed at the response that we get from those of you who have partnered with us in this corner of the world. If you don’t know our ongoing story here, you can check out this blog from last year.  If you have it on your heart to help these Kenyan people suffering under such a huge strain, you can direct it through Lifestream as contributions are tax-deductible in the US.  As always, every dollar you send goes to the need in Kenya.  We do not (nor do they) take out any administrative or money transfer fees.

If you would like to be part of this to support these brothers and sisters and see the gospel grow in this part of Africa, please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1  •  Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Thank you in advance for your gifts and prayers.