Imprezza Academy · Busia, Kenya
Imprezza Academy gives 160 children a secondary education without school fees. Orphans, homeless and very poor children. Nabwire is building the girls' dormitory — a budget of € 100,000 — and will hand the running of it to the team in Busia.
Imprezza Academy was founded by Catherine Omanyo, a politician and education activist in Busia County. The school is private, charges no fees, and for that reason receives nothing from the government. The students here would otherwise be nowhere: orphans, children without a home, children from families who cannot raise the fee. A hundred and sixty students between thirteen and eighteen, 87 of them girls.
“To provide a supportive learning environment for all students irrespective of gender or background, where academic, sporting & spiritual needs are treated equally.”
The school's mission, in chalk on the board at the entrance.
Busia is one of the poorer of Kenya's 47 counties and ranks high for child marriage and teenage pregnancy. Marriage under eighteen is forbidden by law, but in rural areas it is still common. A girl who stays in school does not only learn more — she runs a far smaller risk. So Nabwire starts where the girls sleep.
The 2026 fundraiser
A new dormitory for the girls of Imprezza Academy, with its own sanitary block and beds that are actually beds.
Students who live far from school and still want to learn every day sleep at school. Today the girls sleep under mosquito nets on bunk frames in a shed, without their own sanitary block. That costs students: a girl who cannot sleep safely stays home — and a girl who stays home often disappears from education altogether. The new dormitory is designed by Joseph Muthoga and built by local contractors, in phases paid and checked against milestones.
Nabwire keeps it small and checkable: a project plan, a budget, and someone on the ground who is accountable.
We work at Imprezza Academy in Busia. Everything that comes in goes there.
Every project has a project plan, a budget, a timeline and milestone payments. No money goes out ahead of what has been accounted for.
The project team is Kenyan. The project leader in Kenya is accountable for execution and for reporting on it.
Board members travel to Busia and talk to the school, the students and the community. What we write here, we have seen.
After roughly three years, ownership and management of a project pass to the local team. That is the goal, not the goodbye.
A Dutch board, a school in Busia, and a Kenyan project team.
ChairmanStockholm, Zweden
An is a medical doctor with an international career in bioscience and pharmaceutical research and development, and serves on the boards of several public companies. Her drive is children, and women's leadership in particular. The elders in Busia gave her the name Nabwire.
TreasurerNederland
Born in the Netherlands and partly raised in Asia, Simon is an entrepreneur turned investor with a focus on the health sector. Innovation has always been his passion; putting it to work for good, at home and abroad, is what drives him now.
SecretaryZeeland, Nederland
Marieke is a recently retired general practitioner from Zeeland. She has been active in community work her whole life and serves on two other charity boards. She is an advocate for the well-being of children through education — and a musician.
Nabwire is seeking one hundred thousand euros for a new dormitory for the girls of Imprezza Academy in Busia.
Read onA hundred thousand euros is a building: walls, a roof, bathrooms and toilets, beds, mattresses, pillows and blankets — and a final account an auditor can follow. Every amount counts, and every donor is told what happened to it.
