Samson’s Second Chance
Samson Then
“I lost my father to throat cancer in 2007. After the election crisis in 2008, I spent most of the year in an internally displaced person (IDP) camp. Kenya was so volatile that I could not travel back to the village. I was then placed under the care of my brother. He worked as a night guard in the trading center but his income was not enough to take care of his own family and still pay for school for his 7 siblings, including myself.
I became a high school drop-out. Yeah!….trust me. A high-school-drop-out. With no hope for the future or any dreams to hold on to. But there came a turning point: the moment when everything in my life took a sharp turn. A turn that I will always be proud of.
Thanks to my big brother’s encouragement, I went back to school. The moment I went back to class, everything else became easy. As a scholarship recipient of Asante Africa Foundation, I poured myself into my studies, I made such high grades that I received direct placement to university. I was able to pursue a degree in Economics from the University of Nairobi with a scholarship from Asante Africa and achieved a second-class honors upper class.
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Samson Now
While in university, I used the concept of Pay-it-Forward that I learned from Asante Africa’s Leadership and Entrepreneurship Incubator Program to create a community-based organization that aimed at mentoring young people and doing charity work. This organization, Life Transformers, has gone a long way in supporting different activities to date. The group now has more than 50 members and continues to work with orphans, school children, and teens in the slums of Nairobi. None of this would have been possible without my scholarship, support, and leadership training from Asante Africa Foundation.
My main point is simple: yesterday may have registered yourself as a failure, but tomorrow will register you as a success, but only if you give yourself a second chance. When you give yourself a second chance, people will give you an opportunity.
Thank you, Asante Africa, for giving me that opportunity.”