Jeana Roose King, the outstanding girl graduate of Lincoln County High School in 1981, dreamed of a big city career when she completed college degrees in fashion merchandising and business.

Never did she imagine her life devoted to transforming education and people’s lives in Kenya.

During a visit with her mother, Lincoln County Commissioner Marianne Roose, King came to the Inter Lake to discuss her work. She brought with her beaded sandals, coffee and colorful large bags with unique designs called “Kiondos of Hope.”

All made in Kenya, the bags and other products help support the people, schools and a college in Kenya. King said she and her business partner Debra Akre have brought thousands bags in the last five or six years.

“We have never seen two alike,” she said. “They were traditionally made by mothers for their daughters when they would marry. The women create the design as they make them. Each one is a unique piece of cultural art.”

King and Akre will offer these bags for sale at Eureka’s large annual quilt show on Saturday, Aug. 4. People may also purchase Kiondos and other products through their website tembotrading.com, one arm of their joint operation.

“The other arm is tembotrading.org and is our nonprofit,” she said. “That is where people can go and read about our model and our educational efforts.”

According to King, her connection to Kenya stretched back many years to when she first began sponsoring a Kenyan child through an humanitarian agency. In 2003, she learned through that agency’s newsletter that it needed a qualified person to volunteer for seven months to open a college of business administration.

She immediately called her friend Debra who holds master’s and doctoral degrees in organization and management. The two previously had gone to Vietnam together to deliver medical supplies.

“We both had a heart for that kind of thing,” King said.

Akre declined at first but then changed her mind and moved to Kenya to open the college. At the time, King was taking a break from the business world to stay at home with her son.

“So, Dan, my husband, Jace, who was 5, myself and Debra’s husband went to visit Debra while she was living there — just to do fun stuff like go on safari,” she said. “While we were there, we fell in love with Kenya.”

When Debra returned home in July 2004, she and King began talking about how Kenya’s children were not taught to think in a way that would allow them to solve the country’s challenges such as AIDS, 82 percent unemployment, malnutrition and lack of medical care.

“She discovered the education was based on rote education that had been brought over by the colonists,” King said.

Akre also observed that Kenya was no better off after 40 years of work by humanitarian organizations. To tackle that dilemma, the two women devised a new holistic concept of education that developed the whole child including mind, body and community.

They called it the Akre/King Transformational Model and decided to use this system based on education and entrepreneurial skills to deliver hope and change to Kenyan children in a village of “the poorest of the poor.”

They incorporated their company in September, filed for nonprofit status in October and held their first fund-raiser in December 2004. Akre left for Kenya in January 2005 and King joined her in February.

They choose to work in Ngomano, a small, impoverished village in southeastern Kenya.

“Debra had very long community meetings in the village when she first arrived because our belief is that, when you go into an area to work with the local people, you need to make sure that they want you there,” King said.

Rather than telling them what they needed, they told the people they were coming to work as partners and described what they had in mind. The women discussed the changes they expected and asked if that was an outcome the village wanted.

“One of the elders said, ‘Dr. Akre, why wouldn’t we want the same thing for our children that you want for yours?’” King recalled. “That basically sealed it.”

Starting with two remodeled buildings, two teachers and 30 students, they opened their high school on March 7, 2005. They taught critical and analytical thinking in an environment free of corporal punishment.

According to King, caning remained a common practice in Kenya. She said young people were afraid to express an opinion for fear of a beating.

“How are you going to solve the complicated problems that this country has if you can’t think?” she asked.

They taught the students to take pride in themselves and their culture. Students also learned they could do amazing things with their lives with a good education.

“That’s not something that’s taught to young people in Kenya,” King said.

Although the school did not charge tuition, parents contributed through work and involvement in the school as a vital part of their model.

“We don’t believe in giving things for free. You really take away their dignity when you do that,” she said. “There has to be some give and take.”

It wasn’t long before the success of their students and development work drew attention across the country. Working in partnership with the village, the women oversaw installation of 24 buildings, a dispensary, two wells and a drip irrigation system. Crops were planted and fish ponds developed for food for the school and as a source of income.

The Kionos bags marked their first economic development endeavor. Starting with three women, the project expanded to 120 who learned how to run their bag making as a fair trade business.

“We said we want to buy from you but you need to create your own business so that, if we’re not here, you have the skills and know-how to keep working,” she said.

This business spun off others such as a leather operation making bag handles, a tailoring service to make uniforms for schools in the area and a micro-loan fund to start other enterprises.

King and Akre remain most proud of their students who proved the validity of their transformational model in the national tests required in Kenya of eighth-graders and seniors in high school.

“For the first time in Kenyan history, a brand new school, sitting for national exams, we scored number one in the district,” she said. “The second year we were number one in the district but we scored about 78 out of the top 100 private schools in the country and we have almost 3,000” private schools.

King has dozens of individual success stories but two stand out.

One young man named John Stone rode his bike for a hour and a half one way to get to school and worked weekends to feed his younger siblings while dealing with a mentally ill mother and absent father.

“He is in college now, studying to be an engineer,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

She and Akre recently learned that Ndunge, a young girl in their first graduating class, ran away from home during her sophomore year when her parents decided to marry her off. The mother of their school’s director took Ndunge back to her parents and pointed out how education changed her own son’s life.

“They allowed her to stay in school. She is now in college,” King said. “I always get choked up. Truly, the young people we work with would end up in slums and dying at an early age. Through opportunity and education, these kids’ lives are changed forever.”

In 2010, King and Akre turned over the Ngomano project to the board of directors when they were offered the college that first brought Akre to Kenya. They have renovated the college and intend to apply their model and have started work on an entire new school system.

“We’re building a nursery school on some property we have been given outside of Nakuru, Kenya,” King said. “We’re going to build a primary school and another high school so we can show our model works starting in nursery school all the way up through college.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.