This is my story

I love helping people, but hands down did I not expect to be spending half my time on African soil. I have always enjoyed a simple life, cleaning peoples homes, taking care of my children, I didn’t think I needed much more. But that is when I met Samuel.

In the summer of 2010 my daughter was using a social media website called Tagged, and for some reason there was an annoying guy being weird to her. So I decided to have a look at this website and see what was going on. Little did I know that I would enjoy spending time on Tagged and ended up talking to people to share experiences. One of these people was Samuel.

We started chatting and in time our chats became longer, more personal, we started sending pictures of our life. This went on for more than a year! So after endless talks and pictures we decided it was time to meet. But older people like us don't always know how to have a video-chat, let alone Samuel, he was even worse with technology than I am! So we did the thing no sane person would do, we bought a ticket for me and my youngest son and we flew 13 hours to meet the guy who is now my partner in life and in work.

10 years later

By now, we have shared many laughs and cries. We have helped children and adults move on. We build wells, learned people how to grow food, and are supporting children’s health care and schooling.

With the African Welfare Foundation we raise money to help individuals, one at a time. We teach them how to run a small business, sell clothes, or the food they produce on their farms. We aim to make them self-sustaining. Instead of giving them money, we give them knowledge and resources that they can utilize to grow their families and help their friends.

We believe that the best way to help Africa is to teach them how to do it themselves. Giving them clothes or money will only keep them from working their way out of the dirt.

How we work

It’s important for both the government as well as everyone who is interested in the African Welfare Foundation to understand what we do, and how we do it. That means there is a large legal part that binds us to communicating in a clear and transparant way about how we collect and distribute money. So let us give you an overview.

Our goals

First of, let’s be clear about our goals. We aim to make sure that children and parents in Kenya are thought how to build a sustainable life and business by themselves. That means we do not give them money we have collected directly, instead we try and finance the tools and materials needed to study, or build their business.

How we do it

Secondly, let’s focus on how we do it. Over the year we may categorize different activities in different projects. These projects can be found on this website by navigating to the Activities page. Each of these projects will aim at helping a certain amount of people achieve different life skills. This may include (but is not limited to) building schools, paying for tuitions, growing crops, building farms, etc.

All the money is collected by interacting with individuals online or in real life, some people donate using this website while others donate directly in person by visiting us at a stall on different markets or when we simply run in to them. We do not however go to peoples doors, we aim to keep things relatively simple and focus mostly on telling a fair story. We will not use enhanced advertising activities or over-exaggerate what goes on in Kenya.

All donations are registered through iDeal, Paypal, Creditcard, or our local bank (ING).

Who has access?

Conny van ’t Pad (founder of African Welfare Foundation), Dion de Heer (board advisor), and Dylan de Heer (business advisor). Each of these members hold 33% voting power in order to decide how funds are distributed and utilised to help Kenyan people build better lives.

Who gets paid?

Within the African Welfare Foundation there is no one that gets paid. All contributions are based on goodwill and are not rewarded in any way. 100% of our collected money is spend on the activities mentioned before, helping Kenyan people build their life.

Who works at the African Welfare Foundation?

Legally speaking, only Conny van ’t Pad is a registered employee and founder at the African Welfare Foundation. But we do sometimes get help from people in Kenya completely based on goodwill. There are no other excecutives, founders, owners, or ceo’s.

What are the African Welfare Foundation's plans for 2021?

Since Corona it has become increasingly hard to send goods across the sea for reasonable prices. So this year, and probably next we are mostly focused on purchasing seeds to grow different kinds of trees that grow fruit and similar products to help people become farmers and feed their own families.

Other than that we are paying tuition fees for 27 children, cover medical costs for 2 other children with severe disabilities, and we are renting a room for children who are living on the street in order to give them a roof over their heads.

These things cover the majority of our expected costs but in case of good fortune we may spend additional money on providing more children with healthcare during the pandemic and possibly help more children go to school.