A love story spanning more than 10 years
A small seed that has grown over the years and now supports more than 80 children and their families
Salim is the name of the first child that Jessica Donadio, a very young Roman girl visiting Kenya, held in her arms back in 2014. Since then, a deep love for these people has ignited in Jessica's heart, and over time she began connecting the needs of the local population with the financial resources of people scattered across Italy and the world.
More than 80 people in Europe, America, and Australia have already chosen to trust Jessica's transparency and dedication. In recent years, several people have decided to see firsthand the hard work and dedication with which every aspect of this work is carried out by Jessica and her husband Salimu, and in the last two years a support team has formed around this reality, made up of IT experts, communication professionals, lawyers, and enthusiasts who led to the founding of this association in June 2024.
The association now wants to continue the work started by Jessica, with the same characteristics of transparency and reliability: every month, for every donation received, a detailed report is sent showing how every euro is spent, with an attached photo of the delivery or use of the service.
This way you can be sure that your gesture is bearing the fruit it should.
The team you see in the photo was personally chosen by Jessica (only the webmaster is missing from the photo).
We are not geographically close: we are spread across northern and central Italy, Spain, and Kenya, but this is not a problem for us. Although we are all different, we share one strong purpose: to turn small gestures into fruits!
Sara - the president. Expert in communication, with years of work in radio as both a speaker and in administration, she is the one behind all the bureaucracy, communication, and who keeps the project together.
Carlo - the treasurer. He has managed a bookstore for many years and has a background in television backstages as an operator; methodical, organized, and with excellent familiarity with currencies, he is the right person to manage the financial side.
Valentina - the secretary. Sales assistant in the food sector, she is our person in charge of managing everything related to associative life: members, registrations, recordings, volunteers, minutes, etc.
Jessica - the vice president. She is the one who gave life to the entire project, carrying it forward for years on her own, and represents the operational hand of the association in Kenya, but is actually behind every idea and thought of present and future development.
Piercarlo - the advisor. He runs his own farm, cares about territorial development, and we can't wait to see him at work making the clay Kenyan lands flourish, which only have water two months a year... quite a challenge!
Simona - the advisor. Precise and scrupulous administrative employee, she is the one who manages the mass of data, photos, and information that the association has to handle, as well as being the person responsible for WhatsApp.
Cintamani - the advisor and webmaster. Sparkling and energetic, with more than 15 years of experience in the web and IT sector, she is the one behind the website and all the computer systems that will follow in the months to come.
I visited Jessica when I was 21 years old, in 2017. In the following years I took many other trips, but that month in Kenya is the one that has stayed in my heart more than all the others.
Maybe it's because it was the first trip I took to such a distant and culturally different place, perhaps because I had become attached to the children we played with every day, or because at Jessica's house I felt like I was at home.
It was an experience that marked me deeply, and that has determined the way I see life and the world now. I consider myself truly lucky to have had this wonderful opportunity and I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who wants to take the leap and go: you'll come back with a different view of the world!
Driven by the passion and sacrifices of Jessica and her husband Salimu, we decided to leave for the village and discover what can really be done with donations. From the start, the transparency emerged that, even from afar, one can perceive, and above all the dedication and determination with which they carry forward this project.
We were warmly welcomed into this big family to which we tried, in our small way, to bring some help and smiles. But the truth is that the greatest lessons were given to us by them, teaching us how important it is to help each other, always smile, and be grateful for what we have. We can't wait to go back and embrace everyone again.
In the meantime, we will continue to commit ourselves from here to ensure that so much effort and love reach as many people as possible and to ensure that Jessica and Salimu's sacrifices transform into something ever greater!
When someone asks me to talk about my volunteer work in Kenya, I always answer "you have to live it". When I returned to Italy, I immediately thought about leaving again. Yet, as soon as I arrived in Kenya, I had wanted to run away. When I arrived, Jessica began to share the first "general rules". Handing me my dinner, she told me I had to enter African culture, and so I ate ugali with my hands from the very first evening…
Then she assigned me my mineral water container and a small bottle to refill as needed and, with a candid but confident voice, she explained that there's no shower, no hot water, no water at all, and no toilet… It's in the village where our children are (my Salimu) that I came into deep contact with African culture and saw a deeply rooted culture. It's in that vast garden that you see in the photo where I played sack races, capture the flag... it's in front of the red door where, during food distribution, I saw hopeful eyes, but so hungry for love too...
It's in the pediatrician's office that I saw immense humanity and a professionalism I didn't expect… it's in the cries of the children during vaccinations that I felt love, tenderness, and the need to be embraced and to be embraced myself, too. The African reality is as far as possible from our orderly lifestyle, in Kenya poverty is practically everywhere, yet, during our volunteer work we received hundreds of smiles from the children…
Along the roads, an infinity of cheerful "jambo" from anyone who met us… nothing like our sad and bored "faces", surrounded by widespread well-being that doesn't let us perceive the true joys of life. You arrive at the awareness that reality is not what ultimately makes you run all day in the chaos of daily life and drags you into endless tiredness, that immerses you in your own and others' problems… reality is "truly looking" with the eyes of awareness, the only one that can help us reason how everything is ephemeral and that we must resize the weight of things, situations, people… see things well, the REAL ones... and manage to give the right dimension to everything.
I was a guest of Jessica and her family for two weeks in April 2024. I was able to meet many families whose children receive distance sponsorship, and you can feel a great sense of community within the village: every day was lived deeply from the first minutes after breakfast with moments of sharing together with the other children present there.
The nature surrounding Jessica's house takes your breath away… It was an experience that allowed me to see directly how difficult it is to live in contexts different from those we are used to in Italy, I recommend it to all people who want to give a hand to Jessica and who at the same time want to get to know Kenya!