A Thank You to Nathan Dillon

Nathan decided a little more than a year ago that he wanted to return to Maai Mahiu and work for CTC International for a solid year. He quit his job, packed up his things and left beautiful San Francisco behind to pursue something that he felt he needed and wanted to do. Nathan worked alongside Alison Costain in Kenya for almost six month until her term of serving as the Kenya Director was up. Nathan took over from there becoming the Kenya director for the past seven to eight months. Alison worked very hard to lay the groundwork to establish consistent and sustainable programs. CTC changed!!! We were no longer just bringing teams to Kenya and seeking to fill the needs of those in Maai Mahiu. For once, we were on the ground and staying on the ground. We opened our first office and the Maliaka Kids program was developed. Shortly after that, they developed the Maliaka Mums project and from there we had an actual functioning CTC office.

I witnessed first hand this year the magic behind CTC having a constant being in this town. Within the last two years these programs went from being BIG dreamy ideas to functioning programs that are literally changing LIVES!

CTC would not be what it is without the compassion from those that fall in love with these people and have the faith that we can make a difference in this world.

I just wanted to thank you guys and girls that help us keep our heads and hearts in what we do. Thanks to all of these amazing people that we are fortunate to work with who show us their own personal faith in what we do.

This is Nathan's final week in Kenya and I am sure that he is pretty torn about leaving. I can't speak for him but I can say by seeing this with my own eyes…there are people that were changed by his time in Kenya. I can't imagine what it must feel like to all of those that have gotten close to him and became his family there for the last year.

While we are sad that Nathan has finished his work in Maai Mahiu, another great story unfolds. Jeremiah Kuria who is from Maai Mahiu came here to the US with his family and worked to complete a masters degree. He has now completed his masters degree and has been working with Nathan in Kenya for the last two months to take over as the Kenya Director. This plan was laid out over several years and it's great to see that we can now pass the job over to a Kenyan from the very same town. Again, Jeremiah has worked very hard and has gone through great changes for the sake of his town. We know that we are leaving the position in great hands.

Zane and Jeremiah are both in Kenya now with Nathan, and I am sure that they will see him off and wish him luck. I just wanted to say from those of us here in the states, Thank you Nathan. Thank you for your commitment to those in Maai Mahiu and thank you for keeping a personal blog that allowed us to share in your experiences while there.

Thanks to everyone that makes Comfort The Children International what it is.

Volunteers that come from all over are changed by this small town. We are so fortunate to have had this town and these people cross our path.

Mindy Stallings

CTC partners with Easter Seals Central Austin

Comfort the Children International partners with Easter Seals of Central Austin

For those of you that weren't aware, CTC has moved to Austin, Texas. Since we are building our home base here we wanted to partner up with some local non-profits. Easter Seals is an amazing organization that does great work for children and adults with disabilities so that ties directly with some of our work in Kenya. Easter Seals runs a weekly summer camp for children with disabilities and so we worked with them to gather volunteers and all of the volunteers took a day or more work with the children. We had such an amazing time baking cookies,bowling,visting local childrens museums and farms and most of all just showing some love.

We are super thankful to all of the volunteers that signed up to make this one of Easter Seals most successful camp weeks. Special thanks to the band Alpha Rev, each band member volunteered for a day and helped us out quite a bit.

CTC Write up in Austin's Rare magazine

As Zane Wilemon neared college graduation, the pre-med student increasingly felt he
wasn’t doing anything of real value to help people, so he decided to spend at least a
year doing some volunteer or service work.


“I signed up for the Peace Corps,” Wilemon says.“But, a mentor friend of mine asked if I had
looked at mission organizations. I thought that sounded lame, but he convinced me.”
Ultimately, through African Inland Mission(AIM), Wilemon spent a year in Kijabe, Kenya,
teaching high school French, coaching basketball and working at the medical center.When he got back stateside, he wanted to continue the kind of work he had begun to do in Kijabe, but was unsure how. When a friend contacted him to ask about going to Africa to do service work, he planted the seed for what has become Comfort the Children International (CTC), the non-profit he founded with the help of his brother Rance and some like-minded friends.

“I realized a lot of people probably want to go to Africa to help, but don’t have the religious
conviction or doctrine,” Wilemon says.“I thought, one thing I could do was just open this door. About half of the people who went on that first trip quit their jobs.”When the group returned, many of the members were convinced that they had to domore, and began developing plans for a more sustained effort. Comfort the Children International officially organized as a nonprofit in 2004, taking the name “Comfort the Children” from a song that the Wilemon brothers’ step-father wrote about their work.
Upon returning to Kenya, the CTCI team began building a school, but also began going door to-
door to ask people what they needed.“The uneducated Kenyans said water and education, and the educated Kenyans said water and counseling,” says Wilemon. “That was key. The realization that these people have little to no opportunity. They’re as skilled,intelligent and hopeful as we are. We had to do something there that br ings water,education, counsel and basic opportunity,
and that’s where our vision came for holistic community development.”

Working from a core dedication to community based relationships and a holistic approach,
CTC pursues 5 initiatives: environment,education, health and community. They bring
in experts from universities in the United States to help cultivate projects, which include
Mama’s Got a Brand New Bag, a project which provides employment and economic opportunity for mothers of children with mental or physical disabilities. The project grew out of work with these children, as the team realized the mothers were a population in need as well.“They were left at home with no way to make
a living. They wanted to do something with selling, but they didn’t know what they coulddo. We had a team of professors from Kansas State come and show them how to make these awesome bags. The bags say “This is not a plastic bag” in Swahili on one side, and then the other side is blank, so people can
put their logos on them. The bags help promote sustainability, here and in Africa.”

The project is just one of many currently underway, and CTC is constantly looking for people interested in contributing to the organization’s goals.

Carly Kocurek
Photo by Caroline Mowry
A big thanks to our friends at Kerbey Lane Cafe for
supporting local Austin non-profits. When you
purchase Kerbey Lane Cafe gift cards in February
2009 through RareAustin.com, a portion of the
proceeds will benefit this organization.
Rance Wilemon and Robyn Knocke | Comfort The Children International | ctcinternational.org

In this note: Robyn Knocke , Rance Wilemon