The Field, In Pictures
Eighteen years.
Three villages.
One ask.
A photo essay of YFT’s work in Kenya and Tanzania, with newsletter archives going back to 2013. Click any image for the full caption.
Chapter One
2008
Trinity Bible Church, Osgoode, Ontario
Twenty-five people under a tree.
In 2008, a small group at Trinity Bible Church in Osgoode, Ontario worked through a community-study curriculum and landed on the gospel account of the loaves and the fishes. Jesus, looking at five loaves, two fish, and a hungry crowd of thousands, told his disciples: you give them something to eat. The group decided to act on it.
A mutual friend introduced Roland and Theresa Poirier to Silas Owiti-Oduor, a pastor from a Kenyan village called Yogo. Silas described what was happening in his community: children were dying of water-borne disease and malnutrition. Roland flew to Kenya later that year.
The team came back with land purchased for a community farm, local leaders ready to run it, and a phrase Roland hasn't stopped repeating: you feed them, we help you do it.
Theresa Poirier handled the website, the newsletters, the graphics, and the bookkeeping for the next fifteen years, alongside Roland at their company Nutra-Fix Inc. The work she built quietly is the foundation everything since has been grafted onto.
Chapter Two
2008 to present
Yogo, Siaya District, Kenya
From hard-as-driveway soil to twelve acres of harvest.
Yogo is the mother project. The soil in 2008 was so depleted local farmers described it as hard as a driveway. Children were dying of water-borne disease. The first village well had been dug by hand and was contaminated.
Today Yogo has a twelve-acre farm, a clean-water borehole drilled after two prior attempts in the area had failed, a school, and graduates who have gone on to study nursing, teaching, and engineering at university.
Every program at Yogo is run by Yogo. We partner, we plant, we step back.
12
acres farmed
2008
established
Chapter Three
2014 to present
Seje, Siaya District, Kenya
Built with Stittsville. Run by Seje.
Seje is the second school. It was built in partnership with Stittsville Community Bible Church in Ontario, Canada. The model is the same as Yogo: partner, plant, transfer. Seje Glory Centre Academy runs its own classrooms and feeding program, and its students have gone on to secondary school.
Like Yogo, Seje runs its own kitchen and its own farm. Like Yogo, the school exists alongside a community well and a drought response plan.
Chapter Four
2018 to present
Mwalwigi, Mwanza Region, Tanzania
Mwalwigi, where the need was greatest.
The work in Tanzania centers on Mwalwigi, a community of mostly women and children where the need was greatest. The same partner, plant, transfer model that built Yogo was carried here.
After two years of fundraising, the team drilled a borehole in Mwalwigi and reached clean water. A solar pump, a storage tank, and fencing were installed in the months that followed. Women and children who had been walking long distances for water now make a short trip.
The current campaign is the church build. Earlier temporary structures were destroyed by wind and torrential rain, and the community still gathers for Sunday services under a tree. A cement-block first phase has been designed and quoted, the drawings are complete, and the contractor has been selected.
Chapter Five
August 2021 onward
Mitindo, Tanzania
When the attack came, the response had to come too.
In August 2021, children with albinism were attacked near a remote Tanzanian village. The motivation was ritual superstition. It was not the first such attack in the region.
Mitindo school houses and protects children with albinism year-round, shielded from violence and given access to the medical care, sun protection, and special-needs support that their condition requires. After the attack, more children were brought to Mitindo for protection. YFT mobilised funds for bedding, blankets, sun hats, and care supplies.
We don't lead with this story. We don't put it on the home page. But it is part of what we do, and the donors who fund this work deserve to know that their gifts also go to children who have nowhere else to be safe.
A newsletter from August 2021 documents the attack, the response, and the recovery. It is linked in the archive at the bottom of this page.
The Archive
Every newsletter we have, since 2013.
Long-form letters from Roland and the team. Free to download.