for traditional charities, funding
orphanages and digging wells. In 2005,
they visited those projects in Kenya.
Dale had grown up on a farm near
Chatham, Ont., and walking through
Kenyan villages he was amazed to see
that people weren’t growing their own
healthy food. The kids were surviving
on a diet of ugali, a kind of cornmeal.As Bolton spent more time there,
digging into sub-Saharan history, he
came to believe that the problem was
the way commercial agriculture, with
its dependence on fertilizers and pesti-
cides, had been introduced. Agri-
cultural yields on the continent were
significantly lower than in other parts
of the world, in large part because
small-scale farmers simply couldn’t
afford the rising costs of the fertilizer.
The number of orphans, the lack of
gardens, the dependence on mass agri-
culture—for Bolton, it all suddenly
seemed inextricably connected. The
communities in these villages had the
desire and capacity to care for their
children, but malnutrition was ham-
pering parents and caregivers.Dale and Linda decided to start
small: by funding and training people
to grow modest organic gardens. To
that end, Dale enrolled in an organic
farming course in Kenya. There, he
met Ambrose Mootian, a 25-year-old
from a Maasai tribe west of Nairobi.
Like Bolton, Mootian was a farmer’s
son. And like Bolton, he’d come to
believe in the power of small-scale,
organic farming. Together they trav-
elled to Maasai land near the Tanza-
nian border to help the community
start what they came to call a “life gar-
den.” Locals were skeptical, Mootian
remembers. “But once they started tast-
ing the food, they were like ‘Wow.’”
After that first project, things moved
quickly. “When we helped one village,
three more villages asked for help,” says
Bolton. The organization went wher-
ever they were wanted—in Kenya and
then beyond.
Today, Thrive for Good has 80
employees and interns, and it has
helped more than 1,000 communities
create healthy meals for almost 30,
people. Since 2012, they’ve run a train-
ing school in Kitale, where Mootian
is the CEO. “I’m still planting seeds,”
he says, describing how trainees from
Kenya—as well as 19 other countries
in Africa and beyond—head back home
with a newfound knowledge to feed
their communities.
As for the Boltons, a few years ago
they sold the sailboat. The Caribbean
will wait.THRIVE FOR GOOD
HAS HELPED BUILD
ORGANIC GARDENS
IN MORE THAN 1,
COMMUNITIES.reader’s digest
12 may 2020