I bring greetings from the Tana Delta. In the last few months I’ve experienced issues with the Whatsapp account linked to my mobile number from Kenya. As a result I have created a WhatsApp account using my Malaysia mobile line +60 12 467 3040. Moving forward updates from Tana River Life Foundation will be sent from this number. Kindly add this number into your mobile address book if you wish to continue receiving updates on the foundation via WhatsApp broadcasts. I am now in Singapore and will be here till early June. I forward to meeting with you during this time.
Do let me know if you are able to meet. I am also contactable at +65-98338401 or gabrielteo@yahoo.com.
I am attaching some highlights on our work with students and youth in the Tana Delta as well as our progress in building a Student and Youth Hostel including Guest Quarters. They are available for download here :
Finally please note that we will not appeal for any kind of financial assistance, emergency or otherwise, using Whatsapp chat. Kindly do not entertain any such requests you may receive from this chat. God bless.
TRLF PayNow QR Code* If you feel compelled to contribute to our relief effort, please use our QR code above. If you are unable to access it, please contact Gabriel Teo.
Your generosity will directly contribute to our cause, and we appreciate your willingness to support us. If you encounter any challenges accessing the QR code, please do not hesitate to reach out to Gabriel Teo for prompt assistance.↩︎
I wish you and your loved ones much joy and abundant blessings this Christmas 2023. Our students and youth also prepared a Christmas greeting to thank you for your kind support.
Handraku village was completely submerged
60 households from Darga and 49 from Bura Moyo were displaced.
Meeting with elders of Kikomo Village
576 households from Garden West ward are living in makeshift tents
576 households from 7 villages from Dumi have been submerged or marooned
Children from 85 households from Peponi Village have been displaced
Meeting with the Headman of Mitapani villages
I have also prepared a brief report on an emergency flood relief programme we carried out last week.
TRLF distributes flood relief supplies
As the flood waters recede, and with sufficient funds, we will continue assisting affected communities with quality seeds in January 2024, and in this way ensure food security for the greater part of 2024 for many households. Thank you once again and may God bless you.
TRLF PayNow QR Code* If you feel compelled to contribute to our relief effort, please use our QR code above. If you are unable to access it, please contact Gabriel Teo.
I hope this short note finds you and families well. My sincere apologies for not writing sooner. As is always the case, we came back to a very busy six months since we returned to Kenya in June. It is only now that schools have closed that we are able to attend to long overdue reports. We prepared 7 photo collages which may be viewed here in high resolution.
In addition we also prepared two short videos. The first video is a thanksgiving message from our fully sponsored secondary school students to our donors.
You may also turn on captions and set the video quality to HD for a better viewing experience.
The second video shows our students and youth in their fish pond where they rear tilapia and catfish for home consumption as well as to generate some income to supplement our meals. First harvest is expected in January 2024.
TRLF Youth rearing fish for food and income
We now have seven weeks remaining to our closure for the year on 21st December. Now that the academic year has ended, we intend to use this time to make much progress on the Hostel building, although the rains started yesterday and it may hamper progress. We also plan to use this time to carry out repairs at the community centre and school, like painting works and furniture repairs. As is our practice, all repairs and upkeep doing the school holidays are carried out by our students, youth and interns in return for them to receive some allowance to provide for their families at Christmas.
The youth will also use this lull to work on their farm projects, which includes vegetable farming, aquaculture and bee keeping projects.
This year our youth developed two income generating projects on a small scale, namely pressing moringa seeds for oil, and concrete brick making. We hope these projects can be developed in time to be sustainable local income generating projects.
We end here with apologies once again for the delay is writing this, and wish each one of you much blessings as we head towards the end of the year. God bless.
At the outset, I would like to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to all of you who have taken the time to meet with me and my student Salati during my first trip to Singapore. Your continued support and help are very much appreciated. I am now back in Singapore for a second stay until 20th May 2023 and look forward to meeting up with more of you.
Allow me to provide you a brief update on two of our programmes – both of which are aimed at empowering our students and youth with more than just academic opportunities. The Communal Living and Youth Formation programmes also build character and nurture good values, while developing skills and competencies of the young people being assisted.
Communal Living for secondary school students and youth volunteers
The TRLF Community in Idsowe has grown over the years. We now have 55 fully sponsored secondary school students living together with 15 youth volunteers, for whom I act as guardian.
The TRLF Hostel to permanently house the Idsowe Community is under construction and is scheduled for completion by December 2023. The Hostel will also house the guest rooms for visitors.
Over the years, the older youth and students living at the TRLF community home in Idsowe have matured to become responsible mentors and role models. This has enabled us to increase the number of students we can accept into our community each year.
Youth Formation Programme
In January 2023, we welcomed 15 youth to this 2-year full-time live-in formation programme, which provides the path to full tertiary level sponsorship commencing January 2025.
Besides the different skills they learn from their varied tasks, e.g. house management, catering, financial literacy and project management, the youth also internalize values and good work ethics, such as diligence, focus, planning, target-setting and time management. They also learn how to engage respectfully and empathize with the communities we assist, crossing barriers of tribe and religion.
In carrying out their income generating projects, such as vegetable farming, livestock keeping, fish farming, bee-keeping and moringa oil production, the youth are encouraged to blend ancient wisdom with new knowledge.
The exposure they get from all these tasks helps them to learn how to give adequate and just responses to difficulties and challenges faced by communities around them, while sensitizing them to the importance of maximizing the impact of donor funds.
At the end of the day, the formation they receive helps the youth become more complete persons, maturing into capable and caring young men and women who are able and willing to look after, and to look out for those who come after them.
Aside from these programs, the foundation supports secondary school students through two other programmes, i.e. General Bursaries and Tana Delta Merit Scholarships. We will be sending out a separate report on the Secondary School Programmes.
Your kind support enables us to carry out all these works and we thank you. God bless.
Jambo! (Swahili for Hello!) to all our friends from all of us here in Tana River. I am very happy to inform you that I plan to visit Malaysia and Singapore again in June and July together with one or two of our youth. It’s been a long absence and I am so looking forward to seeing all of you once again. Dates are being finalized and I will send them out as soon as they are confirmed.
Dear friends, although we will NOT be organizing any collection of Mitumba (used clothes/shoes etc) this year; we will be making a special appeal for used school furniture for which our village schools here in Tana Delta are in dire need of.
Specifically, we are appealing for:
(1) Classroom desks and chairs,
(2) Metal cabinets,
(3) Canteen tables and benches and
(4) Teacher’s tables.
One of Tana River Life Foundation’s (TRLF) core tenets is in education, both academic as well as in values formation. This is our key method in realizing our stated objectives of building individual lives and thereby entire communities.
Today, TRLF is a major development partner of the Tana Delta Sub County Education Department in Kenya, helping to provide quality, affordable education for many reaching even the most rural villages. We assist all the 72 public primary schools and 17 public secondary schools in the Delta. The furniture that we receive and ship to Tana Delta goes to help furnish these public schools.
I am accompanying this short note with some photos portraying our recent activities. We hope to have our annual report ready for distribution by the middle of the year. Thank you once again for journeying with us, and to all our Christian friends, we wish you the hope and great joy of the Easter resurrection.
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May God continue to bless and protect us all.
Gabriel Teo 16th April, 2022
Click here if you’d like to download the letter to forward to your friends.
Evans is a beneficiary of Tana River Life Foundation. The foundation sponsored his secondary school education in the Tana Delta, followed by his undergraduate studies at UTAR in Malaysia. We are happy to report that he has graduated. To thank the foundation and his sponsors, Evans wrote the following letter. He hopes it’ll inspire other young people on their journey in life. We hope it’ll inspire you to lend a hand to others in need and hungry for the opportunities we take for granted.
It’s my hope that you are all doing well during this tough time. All is well with me. I am writing to inform you that I have completed my studies in Bachelor in Petrochemical engineering. Thank you for the sponsorship you offered me from the beginning of my secondary school days till the completion of my studies. Thanks to all the staff at TRLF for the time they invested in advising and coaching me throughout my studies, the time they spent in helping me budget for my living expenses both in Kenya and here in Malaysia, correcting me when I was on the wrong path and thanks to all the donors who have contributed to positive changes in my life directly or indirectly.
Just to give a brief background on how I joined TRLF. I completed my primary school education was placed among the top 3 in my class. Unfortunately my parents were not able to afford the school fees for my to continue on to secondary school. At the start of the term, my friend Komora Benedicto, who also graduated recently from UTAR, shared his notes from school with me so that I could study them on my own at home. He was being sponsored by TRLF then and he advised me to apply for a bursary at TRLF.
The first bursary that I received was worth KSH3000 which is equivalent to RM114 ( ~S$38 ). It did not cover my whole school fees for that semester but it instilled hope and determination in me. I pushed myself to the limit as I knew that with good results I could be awarded another bursary. And that is how my life with TRLF started and here I am today with my bachelor’s degree in Engineering.
RM114 may not be that much but it can change someone’s life as it did mine. There are many young people going through what I had experienced. Some won’t be strong enough, they may be discouraged at a young age and their efforts and life might completely go to waste. Thanks to sponsorships from TRLF through the kind donors and staff, young people receive an education and opportunities in life which were previously unavailable to them.
So thank you once again for the opportunity and I can’t wait to continue giving my services when I’m called upon.
Warm greetings from the Tana Delta in Kenya. I hope this message finds you and your families safe. It is a challenging time for all, and from here in Tana, we continue to be united with you in prayers. Kenya started reporting cases of Covid-19 recently, with closures and curfews nationwide, although there are no cases reported here in Tana Delta to date.
I was to leave for Asia by mid-April, but have postponed my trip indefinitely. As such, we will NOT be having a Mitumba collection this year. However, if we are able to travel later this year, we hope to proceed with our collection of school furniture and study aids.
Grade 6 pupils from Onwardei Primary School gladly transporting classroom chairs from Singapore to their school across the River Tana using a traditional dugout canoe.
Since we are not likely to meet anytime soon, I have prepared two reports to give an insight into what we were able to do with your support last year.
On behalf of the many young people and their families, and entire communities here in Tana Delta, that have benefited in one way or another from your assistance last year, we thank you very much.
We hope you will continue to journey with us in 2020, as we strive to build lives of greater dignity, freedom and integrity for many.
May God bless and protect you and your families.
Gabriel Teo Kian Chong 15th April 2020
P/S : Please add gabrielteo@tanariverlifefoundation.org to your address book so that our emails will not be blocked by your Spam filter.
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Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Tana River Life Foundation 2016 Jumble Sale has been cancelled. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused.
I hope this note finds you and your families well.
I am now tying up matters over here in Tana as I prepare to make my trip to Asia at the end of March. It has been extra hectic because of the on-going construction of the new school ( Emmaus Centre Project Phase 1) which restarted late last year and also because we expanded our bursary programme to assist students from Term 1, especially those who performed well in the primary school leaving exams and were not able to continue to secondary school because of financial limitations. Thank you very much once again for your support for our work here in Tana Delta.
I expect to be at my mum’s place in JB by 1st April and in Singapore by the evening of 3rd April. I hope we can meet up sometime in April or May. I will be in Singapore the whole of April and again in the last two weeks of May. I will be in Malaysia during the first two weeks of May as well as the first two weeks of June before returning to Kenya by mid-June.
In the last year, together with a few volunteer friends from Singapore and Malaysia, we registered Tana River Life Foundation Pte Ltd. One of its activities is the sale of Kenyan handicrafts in Singapore & Malaysia, with all profits going to support TRLF projects in Kenya. Soapstone carvings featuring safari animals and Christmas figurines have been the first products. If you would like to view or find out more, please contact Iris Tay at tanariverlifefoundation@gmail.com.
When in Asia, I will be contactable at +65-98338401 (Singapore) / +6012-6237040 (Malaysia) or Whatsapp to +254723521774. I look forward to meeting you during our time in Asia.
Tana River Life Foundation 
