About us
OUR LEADERSHIP
board of directors
Chair: Pamela Dimski
Secretary: Kimberly Mitchell
Treasurer: Diana Weatherford
Audrey Tobey, MD
Nicholas Saltarelli, MD
Carter Sundermann
Petra Marak
founder, executive director
Lisa Baker MD PhD
OUR VALUES
COMPREHENSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE WORK We value a partnership that will achieve the best possible physical, educational and spiritual quality of life for this community.
LONG-TERM COMMITMENT We value a lifelong, redemptive relationship with this community in which we learn and grow from our successful and failed strategies.
EDUCATION FOR ALL OF US We value the inclusion and education of Straw to Bread supporters and Kenyans in forming a model of grass-roots involvement with a local African community and pragmatic solidarity with the poor.
INVITED COLLABORATION We value the invitation to help and to be together each year as we build friendships that bear fruit in action.
EVIDENCE-BASED SERVICE We value the use of intellectual knowledge and research activity in order to make our service as useful as possible and our stewardship of funds as responsible as possible.
“The path to justice begins when we understand that we are all family, regardless of race, beliefs, or power. At its deepest, Straw to Bread is about loving God and loving our neighbor by listening, serving, and giving voice to those who suffer when they invite us into their lives. Joy comes from sharing until we all have enough.
It is a privilege to do the dusty job of washing feet. It is a gift to sit at those feet and learn faith from our Kenyan friends who are spiritually rich. We see redemption in the clinic, the garden, the home of an elder, the smile of an orphan, the dedication of a teacher, the song of a patient in pain. We know in our bones that we are laborers together with God. Straw to Bread does not have an exit strategy. We are on a journey with our Luo partners into the unsettling, unsafe life of God.
It’s what we were born to do.”
OUR FUNDING
2016 Straw to Bread Team
Though it began in the U.S., Straw to Bread now has supporters all over the globe. Our work is carried out by volunteers and is supported by charitable, tax-deductible donations that are often matched by companies as well. Straw to Bread has received gifts from Rotary Clubs in Oklahoma and Florida, churches, college dorm fund-raisers, an American Medical Women’s Association chapter, AbbVie Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, and hundreds of individuals who have been to Kenya with us. One of our special projects, Mothers on the Move, won the Albert Schweitzer Prize in The Netherlands in 2018 and continues to receive support from Rotary Clubs, schools, and businesses in that country. Administrative costs, which are 2.3% of the Straw to Bread budget, are covered by three supporters who want to ensure that 100% of donations go to the work in Kenya.
OUR LIFE TOGETHER
Here’s a link to our 2023 Annual Report.
Here’s our latest tax return.
