Recently our board member Germaine Jackson, Director of Service Learning at Pacific Ridge School in California, shared a short essay with our team that really made me pause and reflect. In the piece, physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen writes about the difference between helping, fixing, and serving.
One line especially stayed with me: “Fixing and helping create a distance between people. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected.”
It’s a powerful reminder that meaningful service is not about seeing others as broken or in need of rescue. It is about recognizing our shared humanity and learning from one another.
This is exactly the spirit behind service learning.
This summer, we are offering our first KGSA service learning trip to Kenya for students, families, and educators who want to experience the school and community firsthand. Participants will spend time in classrooms, join skills clubs, share meals with the girls, and learn directly from the students and staff who make KGSA such a special place. And just as importantly, they return home changed.
Experiences like this remind us that educating girls is not only a local effort in one community. It is part of a global movement shaped by connection, partnership, and shared learning.
We still have a few spots left on our summer service-learning team. Reply to this email if you’d like more information about the trip.
I was first called to this work through an international service learning trip in high school. That experience shaped the path of my life in ways I could never have imagined. My husband and I feel strongly about introducing our own children to these experiences too. My daughter and I recently volunteered in a pediatric dental clinic in Guatemala, another country close to my heart. Experiences like these truly change the lives of young people, just as they changed mine.