About Blessed Generation
Children supported yearly
Kenya locations
Kenyan staff
Years operating
Blessed Generation supports vulnerable children across three locations in Kenya through education, safe homes, foster care, community outreach, and daily nutrition. Around 100 qualified Kenyan staff deliver this work every day.
What we believe
Education is the key to the future — but we look much further than just the child and primary school.
Blessed Generation makes a conscious choice to continue its investment beyond primary school, to provide social-emotional guidance alongside academic learning, and to support the families children come from wherever possible. This reduces longer-term risks — crime, early school dropout, exploitation — and builds lasting resilience in the communities where we work. We do not treat education as a product we deliver. We treat it as one dimension of a child’s development, inseparable from shelter, nutrition, healthcare, and the consistent adult relationships that make any of it mean something.
We take children into residential care only when there is no safer option, and always in coordination with Kenya’s official child protection services. Our preference is always family — keeping children in their own environment when support can make that possible, placing them in foster families when it cannot. The Lighthouse Village in Malindi — 14 homes where working couples take in BG children as full family members — is the clearest expression of this conviction. It is also the program that other Kenyan child welfare organizations are now visiting to learn from.
How we work
5
Five programs. One shared logic: address every barrier a child faces, simultaneously.
A child who has a safe home but no school fees will not finish their education. A child in school but without food cannot concentrate. A child with academic support but without social-emotional stability will not use it. BG addresses every dimension of a child’s development at the same time — not because it is ambitious, but because partial intervention consistently fails.
01. EDUCATION
Education — from kindergarten through to university
All school fees, textbooks, uniforms, and boarding costs are covered in full. BG Ruiru High School has achieved a 98% KCSE national pass rate since opening in 2015.
02. healthcare
Healthcare — regular check-ups, treatment when needed.
Medical care is provided for every child in BG’s residential and outreach programs. The outreach program extends healthcare to the caregivers of vulnerable children — because a sick grandparent who cannot access treatment is a grandparent who cannot raise grandchildren safely.
03. community
Outreach & Empowerment
Fortnightly home visits to vulnerable families — food packages, medical care, school fee support. Every child kept at home through outreach is a child who never needs a shelter place.
02. PROTECTION
Safe homes — family-scale, not institutional scale
Maximum 10 children per home, with dedicated caregivers who are consistent presences — not rotating shift workers. In Malindi, 14 Lighthouse Village homes place children within real working families.
02. PROTECTION
Safe homes — family-scale, not institutional scale
Maximum 10 children per home, with dedicated caregivers who are consistent presences — not rotating shift workers. In Malindi, 14 Lighthouse Village homes place children within real working families.
Our history
40
Built incrementally, over four decades, by people who stayed long enough to see what they started actually work.
Every decision in BG’s history was made in response to a specific need that existing provision was failing to meet — a high school that BG children were struggling in, a coastal crisis that child protection services could not address alone, election violence that left children with nowhere to go. BG’s growth is not the result of a strategic expansion plan. It is the accumulated response of an organization that kept showing up.
The first children are cared for in a small residential setting near Nairobi — basic shelter, food, and primary education. The name reflects a simple conviction: that these children, given the right conditions, would become a blessed generation for Kenya.
When the orphanage faced closure, Ria Fennema — a teacher from Hurdegarijp in Friesland who had first visited Kenya as a volunteer in 2000 — takes over management and moves to Kenya permanently. The organization begins to develop more structured education, qualified Kenyan staff, and a broader vision for what BG can become. Fester Medendorp joins in 2004.
Child protection services report 15,000 children in need along the Malindi coast — largely orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. BG surveys affected families and makes a discovery that will shape its entire model: many children can stay at home if their family receives targeted practical support. The outreach program is born before the shelter even opens. Land is purchased and both a shelter and a school are built within twelve months.
Child protection services report 15,000 children in need along the Malindi coast — largely orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. BG surveys affected families and makes a discovery that will shape its entire model: many children can stay at home if their family receives targeted practical support. The outreach program is born before the shelter even opens. Land is purchased and both a shelter and a school are built within twelve months.
After years of watching BG children struggle in large, impersonal boarding schools far from familiar support, BG builds its own secondary school in Ruiru. Small-scale, structured around social-emotional support as well as academics, with social workers on campus daily. Since 2015, the pass rate on Kenya's KCSE national examinations has been 98%. Alumni have gone on to universities and professional careers across Kenya.
BG develops a new model for child care: family homes on the Malindi campus where working couples take in BG children as full family members. The first 12 homes are built in collaboration with the Pharus Foundation. By 2025 the village has grown to 14 homes. Other child welfare organizations across Kenya are visiting to study and potentially replicate the model.
Some alumni are now donors — sponsoring the children who sit where they once sat. This is the clearest evidence BG has that the model works: people who grew up inside it invest in its continuation for the children who come after them.
People said to me: Ria, this is too big, too complicated. But now it stands. And it works. Other organizations come to see it, want to learn. And we are so grateful.
Ria Fennema
At the Lighthouse Opening
ROOTED IN COMMUNITY
“The rhythm of progress is found in the collective heartbeat of those who serve.”
Behind every life changed is a dedicated team of educators, caregivers, and visionaries working in unison.
FIELD OPERATIONS
Our dedicated team in Kenya, coordinating across three vital regions.
DIRECTOR & CHAIR LADY OF THE BOARD
Ria Fennema
A lifelong commitment to the children of Kenya, Ria’s journey began with a single mission: to restore dignity through education.
operations
Fester Medendorp
Joined Ria in Kenya in 2004 and has managed the operational, construction, and infrastructure dimensions of the organization ever since.
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY
To ensure maximum impact and absolute financial clarity, Blessed Generation operates as two distinct legal entities. One handles the rigorous on-ground operational execution in Kenya, while the other serves as the strategic funding and governance anchor in the Netherlands.
100%
EFFICIENCY TARGET
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execution
The operational heart. Registered as a Charitable Children’s Institution (CCI), managing the complex reality of field-work across three major Kenyan provinces.
100+
qualified kenyan staff
3
3 Major hubs (Malindi, Nyamira, Ruiru)
- Accountable to the Kenya NGO Coordination Bureau.
- Direct management of schools, residential homes, and medical clinics.
- Lead partner for local child welfare authorities in Coast and Nyanza.
registration profile
P.O. Box 5236, Malindi | NGO Bureau #OP.218/051/2004/0351/3421
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provision
Blessed Generation. Netherlands.
The funding anchor. An ANBI-registered foundation run strictly by volunteers to ensure donor funds bypass overhead and reach the children.
0%
paid staff in NL
ANBI
TAX-DEDUCTIBLE STATUS
- Fiscal governance and international reporting standards.
- Management of global sponsorship relationships and corporate gifts.
- Ensuring 100% of designated program funds reach Kenya.
LEGAL IDENTITY
KvK 01100560 | RSIN 8145.90.998 | Hardegarijp, Netherlands
The Financial Conduit
01.
MOBILIZATION
BG Netherlands activates international networks, securing corporate and individual support under Dutch fiscal law.
02.
TRANSMISSION
Funds are moved monthly to BG Kenya accounts, strictly earmarked for specific program outcomes like school fees or nutrition.
03.
OPERATION
BG Kenya’s 100+ professional staff deploy the resources on the ground, transforming capital into human development.
Built on the belief that nothing should be hidden.
100%
EFFICIENCY RATIO
Every donation is tracked with surgical precision. We maintain a zero-waste policy where administrative costs are covered by independent patrons.
"For forty years, our greatest asset hasn't been our buildings or our budgets, but the trust of those we serve. Transparency is simply how we keep that promise alive."
Gladys Ogari
Gladys Ogari
Every donation is tracked with surgical precision. We maintain a zero-waste policy where administrative costs are covered by independent patrons.
The Living Ledger
Transparency isn’t a report; it’s a heartbeat. Our kinetic data tracking ensures that every Shilling is accounted for in real-time, flowing directly from source to impact.
100%
AUDITED EFFICIENCY
Radical Tansparency
Built on the belief that nothing should be hidden.
Foundation established in Nairobi with the industry's first "Public Receipt" policy, ensuring all initial capital was documented in public view.
Awarded the Excellence in Transparency prize for 20 consecutive clean international audits by Tier 1 global accounting firms.
Implementation of live cryptographic tracking for all supply chain logistics, allowing donors to see the movement of resources in seconds.
Transparency & Governance
The Journey of Impact
Blessed Generation Nederland provides the financial oversight and fundraising backbone. As a registered ANBI entity, we ensure that every Euro is accounted for with near-zero overhead.
Did you know?
Through Dutch tax benefits, a net gift of €27 can provide a full month of residential care, food, and education for one child.