Spring 2009 Issue

 

Jump for Joel Update

Shana Stine and Maggie, who's about 4 years old

 

By Amy Spies, former managing editor

In our summer 2008 issue of UIS Alumni magazine, writer Courtney Westlake featured UIS liberal studies student Shana Stine’s work at an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. The response to the article was overwhelmingly positive. So we asked Stine to provide our readers with an update on her nonprofit organization, Jump for Joel.

Stine, a senior honors student, was a sophomore when she first went to Kenya with a friend who was returning to his homeland. But she knew she didn’t want to be merely a tourist; she wanted to help out somewhere, somehow. Thus began a series of what she calls “coincidences,” for lack of a better term, that resulted in her connection to Gathiga Children’s Hope Home, where she spent two weeks working; her life and her plans for her future were altered forever.

When she came back, Stine created the Jump for Joel organization with the help and support of her friends, and she changed her major from political science to liberal studies so she could steer her own course to her future through the immediate application of her education.

After graduation, Stine begins her new job working with children at the Washington Street Mission in Springfield, and she will continue working with the Jump for Joel organization. Further, Stine wants to connect local elementary school children with Gathiga and other children’s aid facilities to provide American children with the opportunity to make a difference in the world.

David Lasley '07 HIS, campus minister for Christian Student Fellowship, and friend Maina

Stine is a remarkable young woman whose experiences have changed not only her life, but many lives: those of the people who have received and those of the people who now have the opportunity to share. We are thrilled at her abilities to apply her education, we are proud of the differences she has made and will continue to make, and we can’t wait to see what else she does … and we’ll expect an update.

 

Update from Shana Stine

Kenya 2008: Our trip last summer was fantastic! It was a delight to have five friends and fellow Christian Student Fellowship members on the team, as opposed to the year before when I went by myself. We worked primarily at Gathiga Children’s Hope Home, the orphanage we sponsor through Jump for Joel. While there, we helped to install, by hand (!!), flooring and walls for the nursery classroom. The GCHH children will never have to study on a dirt floor again! We also helped with a feeding program in one of Nairobi’s slums. The slum volunteers were having difficulty affording the food, so upon our return to the United States, we added the feeding program to our fundraising efforts through Jump for Joel.

Kenya 2009: We are so excited to announce that this July we are taking two teams to Kenya! The first team is comprised of a variety of people – middle school teachers, high school seniors, construction workers and college students. Besides UIS, we’re also taking students from Illinois State University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University. Our second team is a UIS CSF team. There are nine UIS students and alumni on this year’s teams and eight non-UISers. We will again focus our work at the Gathiga orphanage, this year building a two- or three-room dormitory. We will also visit other orphanages, schools and slums.

Fundraising Update: To date, we’ve raised more than $30,000 to assist GCHH and the Kabiria slum! We’ve used the money to pay the school fees for all the children, build a fence and entrance gate, buy bunk beds and school uniforms, pay the GCHH staff, finance the feeding program in Kabiria, purchase an institutional cooker for the kitchen and improve various facilities at GCHH. We’ve even put one of the girls in college. Peni is a freshman at the University of Nairobi and her life goal is to fight corruption and poverty in Kenya. We feel very blessed to be part of her story.

How others can get involved: I know it’s not an exciting answer, but the most immediate way to help J4J is to donate money. We have to raise a minimum of $2,500 each month to meet the basic needs of GCHH and the Kabiria feeding program, which can be quite challenging, especially for college students who voluntarily run J4J in their “free time.” In addition, we’re raising money for the ’09 trip project for the new dormitory and for our individual trip expenses (which are around $3,000 for each person). We also want to help a Canadian volunteer build a sustainability project at GCHH with chickens.

Of course, none of this is possible without the generosity of our supporters. We have been amazed at the number of people, particularly middle school and high school students, who have stepped in and given both money and time to Jump for Joel. I wish everyone could see the things we’ve witnessed: kids in Central Illinois changing the world of kids in Kenya, and even more exciting, kids in Kenya changing the world of kids in Central Illinois.