Chrispine Juma: from sponsored student to nursing leader

The first time Chrispine Juma stood in front of a crowd with a microphone, he was terrified. The most recent time, he was addressing a national gathering of nurses as president of the Young Nurses Association of Kenya. Between those two moments sits a sponsorship, a stack of night-shift textbooks, and a stubborn belief that care is a skill worth mastering. Chrispine joined the Siaya Project sponsorship programme as a secondary school student. The fees were covered; the rest he built himself. He chose nursing after watching how much of rural illness is not dramatic but preventable: an untreated wound, a late diagnosis, a clinic too far to reach on foot. He trained, qualified, and took up an internship at Kenyatta Referral Hospital. Then he went further, organising other young nurses around the working conditions and mentorship they rarely get when they are new. "Grateful for the incredible journey and the support of Siaya Project sponsors," he says. "Excited to embark on this fulfilling career path and make a positive impact in healthcare." He now returns to Siaya during holiday mentorship camps, telling students the thing he most needed to hear at sixteen: your postcode is not your ceiling.