Komolion Human Development Fund encourages and provides funding for projects in local communities that are designed by community members to enable increased education, health, cooperation, poverty reduction and quality of life for the entire community. We envision a world in which children and adults have opportunities to thrive personally and to make positive contributions to their communities.
Though the mission began in 2007, when a group of Baylor University students took a trip to the Komolion School in a remote village of the Pokot tribe in Kenya, the organization was officially founded in January 2017. Funding has been focused primarily on reducing Female Genital Mutilation and early marriage in Komolion by sponsoring some girls in boarding schools and by sponsoring a village-wide alternative coming-of-age ceremony that recognizes uncircumcised females as adult women. In 2017, the Baylor student community raised enough money to buy new desks for Komolion primary school classrooms, repair and paint classrooms, set up hand-washing stations, purchase beehives and chickens for villagers to improve nutrition and provide a source of income, and begin a gardening project with villagers. The labor for these projects was done by the Baylor Men’s Choir and village residents. Another group of donors provided shoes for each child in the village. The Fund has also contributed to other community partners to address the needs of disabled children and to help educate children in Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa.
The idea for music and mission in Kenya began in 2005 when Dr. Randall Bradley, Professor of Church Music and Director of the Baylor Center for Christian Music Studies, and his wife Brenda Bradley took the Baylor Men’s Choir to Kenya. They sang in children’s homes, schools, and churches, and travelled widely, learning about the culture and meeting the people of Kenya.
The Bradleys returned with various groups in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2017. They developed a collaboration with Zipporah Sindiyo, an experienced travel guide and with her husband Daniel Sindiyo, a retired administrator from the Kenya Wildlife Service. In the spring of 2017 the Sindiyos travelled to Baylor to speak in chapel services. They continue to be vital mission partners with the Komolion Human Development Fund, Inc.