From Nakuru's dumpsite to university: the school more than 1,000 children have passed through
Pastor Alex Maina started bringing bread and juice to children at the Gioto dumpsite in 2001. His school, The Walk, has since taught more than a thousand, and some now have degrees.
Nakuru — In 2001, Pastor Alex Maina began visiting families who scavenge at the Gioto dumpsite in Nakuru, bringing children juice and bread each week. Four years later he rented a room in nearby London estate so they would have somewhere to spend the day away from the dirt. That room became The Walk Centre, a school that more than 1,000 children have now passed through, TNX Africa reports.
The programme opened in 2005 with 45 children; attendance rose to 75 when meals were introduced.
Three of its graduates
- John Maina grew up in cardboard shelters at Gioto, eating discarded food. He joined The Walk in 2013, went on to Crater View Secondary School and college, and now runs a music recording business.
- Lilian Diki lost her mother in a house fire when she was seven. With help from Pastor Maina and his wife, she finished school, trained as a nurse at Kenya Medical Training College, won a scholarship to Maseno University and has written four books, including It Ends with Me. She says she writes so the cycle will not continue with her generation.
- Maureen Nashikanda joined The Walk at three. She graduates from Laikipia University in November in English and literature, plans a master's degree and a lecturing career, and wants to give back to the children there.
Maina says children raised on the dumpsite without schooling tend to repeat their parents' lives, and education breaks that cycle. The dumpsite is still there and families still depend on it, he says, but he has seen real change, and other schools now work with the community too.
Source: TNX Africa, reporting by Kipsang Joseph, 17 October 2026.
