Our Leadership

Founder & Executive Director, Akinyi 'Menya' Williams

Akinyi ‘Menya’ Williams is the Founder and Executive Director for HFTC. She is a Management Consultant at Ingenix Consulting, a UnitedHealth Group company. She is married to Travis Williams and lives in Andover, MN with her stepson. She also serves on the board of Moving Forward. Akinyi began her education at The Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in 1994 and transferred to the USA in 1996 where she earned a B.S. in Business at Metrostate University and an M.B.A. from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

 

Akinyi’s story:

 

"I was born and raised in Kenya, sixth of nine children. Growing up in Kenya, where food and resources were limited, and in a home where extended family always lived with us, needing a helping hand, I learned to be giving and resilient. I saw the disparity between the children who had an opportunity in life and those who had nothing. Poverty and HIV had left many children and families struggling to provide for themselves. I was 12 years old when we went to my father’s home, in rural Kisumu, to visit my grandparents for the first time. I followed my cousins to their school one day and when all of children dispersed into their classrooms, I noticed that they had no chairs, no blackboards to write on with chalk, much less no walls. They all sat on rocks or dirt on the ground! When I got back home I asked my mother if we can bring back some chairs from our home in the city next time we visit Kisumu. She just looked at me and smiled. From them on, I knew I had a bigger calling...

 

So when I moved to the USA 14 years ago, I knew that I could not just build a life for myself and do nothing back at home. I was on fire with a mission to make something out of myself and help others come together to make a difference. My family looked up to me and failure was not an option. I overcame many challenges as I worked through school having had the opportunity to work in the fast-food industry briefly, then nursing, collections, airlines, mortgage and real estate sales and now healthcare management. Through the years, I always sent a portion of my check back to my mother, to care for my younger siblings, the extended family and the orphans my parents took in. Hope for the Child was founded in my first year of graduate school while I was pursuing an MBA. The goal of the organization is to provide an education for the growing number of disadvantaged children in Kenya, while giving donors here in the USA an opportunity to give back.

 

We have grown from serving 6 children in 2007, to 140 children today! I know that we have a lot to look forward to as we continue grow and the road may be rough ahead, but I believe that with God, all things are possible and we will do even greater things in the coming years."

 

Advisory Board Member, Scott Hillstrom

 

Scott D. Hillstron, J.D., is co-founder and Chairman of The HealthStore Foundation. Mr Hillstrom is a U.S. based entrepreneur and business/legal advisor. Prior to co-founding The Healthstore Foundation in 1997, Mr. Hillstrom served for 10 years as the volunteer President of Steiger International, a youth evangelism ministry spun out of Youth With a Mission. After practicing business law as Managing Partner of Hillstrom & Bale, Ltd., in the 1980s, he became co-founder and Managing Director of Rehab One, Inc., a multi-state network of hospital-based medical clinics in the 1990s. Since then, he has advised and invested in business involved in computer networking, software, entertainment, intellectual property and other fields in the US, Europe, Africa and New Zealand.

Scott serves as a mentor and lends his expertise to the mission at Hope for the Child because he believes in our team and the cause for which we work.


Board Member, Aleksandr Kladnitsky

 



Board Member and Grant Writing Lead. Aleksandr has been on the board of Hope for the Child since its incorporation. "I give to and volunteer for Hope for the Child instead of another organization because I know I will have the unique opportunity of seeing exactly how my donation is making a difference in the lives of children. By donating to a small organization I can hear about what the children are doing, what they are learning, what grades they are getting, etc. I give to an organization so far away because I feel that every dollar can make a large difference to a young human being and ultimately the world ... My vision for Hope for the Child is to give the children not just a good education, but an exceptional one, to raise leaders who will be committed to improving their communities and their world. I look forward to the day when the children are old enough to plant a community garden or clean up a local park. As a Board Member of Hope for the Child, I strive to help set the overall strategy and vision of our organization, ensure our responsiveness and integrity to donors and taxpayers, and continuously strive to find funds to support our daily operations."

 

Board members - Minneapolis, MN

Akinyi Menya - Founder, Business Development

Aleksandr Kladnitsky - Business Development, Grant writing

Renee Thompson - Finance and Accounting

Matthew Ylvisaker - Media Relations

Doug Bethune - Nutrition, Agriculture and Natural Resources

Scott Hillstrom - Advisory

On the Ground - Kisumu, Kenya

Jashon and Mary Menya - Project Directors 

Alex Oliech - School Prinicipal and Administrator 

Albert Menya - Research and Project coordinator

Moses Kayila - Research and Support

Directors and Volunteers - Minneapolis, MN

Isabella Menya - Program Coordinator

Philomena Sile - Child Sponsorship Program

Mary Davies Stark - Marketing Support

Don Weinmann - Marketing Support

 

 

 

 


Our Team
HFTC offers individuals and corporations opportunities to make a significant difference in these children's lives through monetary donations and/or active participation. A strong team, both in the United States and on the ground in Kisumu go a long way to realizing our mission. We have the strength and the ability to make a positive impact in the lives of many, one child at a time.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Our Students

The students that we serve consist of children from various disadvantaged groups, including but not limited to, children from backgrounds of poverty, abuse and HIV/AIDS in the Kisumu area.
Hope for the Child will enable orphans to become adults who are able to contribute to society and defeat poverty for generations to come. Through education and community leadership initiatives, we inspire children to realize their full potential in life. The aim of HFTC is to bring not only food and substance to the body, but to nurture the mind and soul through love, education, and parental guidance.

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Our Vision

To make quality education accessible to HIV orphaned and destitute children; beginning in Kisumu, Kenya.


Our Mission

1. Provide residential housing for 200 orphans, plus educational facilities and sanitary water supply to 300 students, and their community.
2. Provide a solid foundation in a family environment, a sense of belonging and spiritual enlightenment for the children we serve.
3. Support revenue-producing initiatives that will help sustain our projects.
4. Build partnerships with communities, churches, philanthropic organizations both locally and globally to help us reach our goals.

 

Our Goals

1. To empower disadvantaged children so that they can grow to be productive citizens, give back and rebuild their communities.
2. To create and nurture leaders who will impact change in different parts of the world.
3. To present our volunteers with the opportunity to travel to our school and interact directly with the children and take part in building the project through "voluntourism", teaching, research or for a personal uplifting experience.

 

Our Code of Ethics

1. We are focused exclusively on our mission and don’t pursue anything that does not serve it.
2. To ensure that we are efficient, effective and financially responsible, we test our actions and measure our success by how well we achieve specific goals central to our mission and not by how well we raise funds or build our public image.
3. To ensure that our children come first, we subordinated our own organizational and personal interests to the interests and well being of the population we serve.
4. We strictly adhere to the principles of integrity and trust, always respecting longstanding principals of sound governance by an actively engaged board of directors.
5. We believe that resources needed to achieve our mission are abundant; we work with partners and share what we know in common cause with others pursuing the same mission.

 


Project Mtoto

One of our initial projects is Project Mtoto. We are building a village within Kisumu, Kenya. This village will become home to 200+ orphaned children and will include a school, library, play area, guesthouse, and a sanitary water supply that will support 200+ orphans and 300 additional students. The site also accommodates farmland to enable the village to become nutritionally self-sustaining.

 

"Serving a child in need is a privilege and the greatest gift of all."

-Akinyi Menya, Executive Director, HFTC