A School in Kenya Helps Baltimore’s Troubled Youngsters

Like many of his friends in the crime-ridden neighborhood in Baltimore’s

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inner city, Brandon Harlee had a rough beginning in life. At age 2, he watched as his father shot and partially paralyzed his mother.

Brandon’s neighborhood was small comfort. Gangs roamed the streets, and illicit drugs were everywhere. As he grew older, he started getting into trouble, and by the sixth grade he was out of control.

Enter Baraka, a Baltimore nonprofit group that runs a school in Kenya for troubled seventh- and eighth-grade boys in hopes of turning their lives around.

The organization was started by Robert Embry, head of the Abell Foundation, which provides a third of the group’s $750,000 annual budget. It had originally planned to operate the school in Baltimore, but ended up in Kenya, where it could do its work on a smaller budget.

The school, also called Baraka, or “blessing” in Swahili, is a four-hour drive from Nairobi, in the lush countryside near Mount Kenya. Since behavior problems have kept many of the boys behind academically, the curriculum is intense. Each student has chores, and discipline is strict, but youngsters get rewards, too, such as basketball, soccer, safaris, and videos. Every year, the seventh-grade class climbs Mount Kenya.

Most of the $17,000 needed to send a boy to Baraka comes from the organization, which depends on the Baltimore school system for about two-thirds of its budget. Parents are required to pay $60 a month to be sure they are committed to the program. A third of that goes directly to the boys for spending money.

Many Baraka students come from poverty, but when they see shoeless schoolchildren in Kenya who can’t afford basic school supplies, the Baraka students take a different view of themselves, often spending their money on gifts, such as pencils and paper for Kenyan children.

The Baraka students return home for the summer after seventh grade, but most go back to Baraka for eighth grade. By the end of their second year, the majority are doing better both emotionally and academically. Since they usually return to the same crime-ridden neighborhoods in Baltimore, the organization keeps tabs on them, checking on their grades and trying to help keep them from falling back into trouble.

When Brandon returned to Baltimore after his two-year stint, he was transformed. Before Baraka, he was barely squeaking by academically. He’s now doing very well in 11th grade at City College, a magnet school that accepts only top students — the same school that the Abell Foundation’s Mr. Embry and his three children attended.