Painting the future: Connecting Henrico to Kenya through works of art

Will Green has been on a mission to raise money for a Kenyan orphanage by selling the work of African artists to Henrico buyers. This holiday season he’s offering “Sno Daddy” greeting cards sold in a set of 10, featuring five unique designs like a Black Santa Claus and an African family celebrating the holidays.

“It’s kind of hard to find Black-oriented greeting cards,” said Green, who is African American, “so we decided to just come up with our own.”

This is a relatively new business for Green, one that brings him to craft shows year-round. His goal is always to sells paintings and other artwork to raise money for the Gathiga Children’s Hope Home, an orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. He operates a website, through which buyers can order artwork directly, but makes most of his sales through word of mouth or by attending local crafts festivals.

Green attended the Jackson Ward 2nd Street Festival in late October. There, he had paintings displayed ranging in price and size, all of which were created by artists in four countries across the African continent and shipped to the United States. Green and his 15-year-old volunteer at the festival took just 15 minutes to set up their tent, then spent the next seven hours selling the works of art.

A starry night inspired landscape of Richmond’s skyline sat beside prints of Michelle Obama sporting a crown. Custom paintings are available upon request, Green said. The average price of a 45-inch squared painting is $450. As passersby walked the crowded streets, some stopping for a better look at the paintings, Green and his young volunteer jumped to inform them of the organization’s mission.

Paint Our Future is a nonprofit that Green started in 2019. His business model is to sell quality paintings, all made by artists in impoverished areas of Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Ghana. He then uses the proceeds to fund projects in the orphanage. So far, Paint Our Future has raised between $15,000-$20,000, which has funded a tech center, flood lights, a water filtration system, plumbing, and various food and school fees.

“The beauty of the model is this: not only am I helping truly starving artists, but I have access to an unlimited resource of creative beautiful original artwork,” Green said.

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Paint Our Future is just one element of a decades-old movement that connects African artwork with American buyers. It, and other similar nonprofits, rely on fair-trade principles that ensure African artists receive fair compensation for their work – which has been historically exploited from them.

Green says finding a connection to “the Motherland” is important part of his mission.

“I’m picking paintings that reflect the African American experience,” Green said. “These things really resonate with people.”

Green and his wife, Dr. Felicia Green, who holds a PhD.in psychology, visited the Children’s Hope Home on their first trip to Nairobi in December 2017. The trip was a vacation for them, but it fell on his late mother’s birthday – just a few days before Christmas. Green’s mother had a tradition of spending her birthday giving out food to those in need, and since her passing Green has done the same. Not knowing where to do this kind of work in Kenya, he called an old work colleague who directed him to the orphanage. There, he and his wife filled up a car with chocolates and sodas and handed them out to the kids.

The Greens thought they were signing up for a quick day of giving just before Christmas. But the children touched their hearts, especially when they tried to leave. The youngest kids begged them to return and tapped on the glass of the car, shouting: “Mr. Green! Dr. Green! When are you coming back?”

The Greens reassured them they’d be back soon, but they both recall being hesitant. They were tourists in a foreign country; it was impossible to know when they’d return. But Dr. Green said she knew in her heart she would come back.

The Greens started donating to the Gathiga home in January of 2018, just a month after their first visit. They began by giving a few hundred dollars every month or so, all out of pocket. By May, Will Green realized he needed new business model to raise enough money to support the orphanage, and he began conceptualizing Paint Our Future. Initially, he reached out to two Kenyan artists who said they’d be willing to sell original artwork at a predetermined price. Now he has 12 artists, one of whom is Julius Mungai.

Mungai and one other artist are responsible for about half of the paintings that Paint Our Future has produced since its founding, Green said. Green noted he makes sure to pay his artists more than they would typically make for projects of comparable size in their home country.

Costs are a big factor for Green. After realizing that canvas stretching was costing more than shipping, artist payments, and other handling fees combined, he changed the process. He now has his artists roll up their canvases, place them in tubes and ship them to the U.S., where Green hand-stretches them over wooden frames himself, with YouTube videos serving as his only guide.

Mungai has been painting for 10 years – six at Paint Our Future. In that time, he’s made more than 50 paintings for the nonprofit. He’s proud to do work that helps a local orphanage, he said.

“I’m glad to be working for that cause…it’s a good cause, I’m grateful,” Mungai said. “It is good that the money goes back to Kenya to help this community.”

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Green says he owes the connection Paint Our Future has to the orphanage to founder, Lucy Ndegwa. She’s affectionately called Pastor Lucy, or just “Mom.”

Ndegwa is a Christian pastor at New Hope Visionary Ministries Karura. In 1996, Ndegwa began preaching on the streets of Nairobi. There, she encountered numerous poor, starving children begging for food. She invited seven boys home for a warm lunch. By the end of the day, they decided they weren’t going back. And so, the Gathiga Children’s Hope home was born.

“Our aim is to give them hope – that is why we call our orphanage the ‘Hope Home,’” Ndegwa said.

“My part in this is the easy part, you know it really is,” Green said. “She’s doing all the work. She’s staying up at night trying to put two and two together to make it all happen. She’s the one that’s the mother to 40 kids today, 50 kids tomorrow, dealing with their emotional needs, their physical needs, their medical needs, their spiritual needs, everything. Everything.”

Felicia Green added that Ndegwa started the orphanage from nothing but an old mattress and the kindness of her heart.

“She’s not a wealthy woman, by far, but she’s a giver. Whatever she has, she’s learned how to share it and stretch it,” Green said.

Felicia Green traveled back to the orphanage in 2018 with her nonprofit network of women of color, the Mentoring Association of Professional Christian Women. It now raises funds to visit the Children’s Hope Home and provide the children with mentoring, hygienic supplies and nutritional meals.

Green said these trips are exchanges of ideas and culture. She said the group helps African American professional women learn how to help people living in poverty in Africa, “without imposing our own beliefs, our own way of living on others.”

Green and members of her organization made another trip to the orphanage in December of 2023, where they led workshops with the children filled with dancing, singing, poetry and bible reenactments. This year’s theme was “from trauma to triumph,” tackling the lingering challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Green said each day the numbers grew; she suspected children were going home and telling their friends about the workshops. She estimated about 100 children attended.

Will Green said education is of upmost importance for Ndegwa. He has seen through working with her and the orphanage that education is one of the most successful ways to get children permanently off the streets and into the employment pool, and much of the funds he sends over go to school fees. The children at the Hope Home all attend a local school.

“Food is the thing to get them to come back to the orphanage where they’re safe,” Green said. “But her main goal is to make sure that they’re educated.”

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Today, the Gathiga home routinely houses around 40 people, but that number fluctuates daily.  Since she began in 1996, Ndegwa has been consistently going to the streets of Nairobi in search of children in need of shelter. Now, many of the children she brought in years ago lend a helping hand, working to bring more kids to the home.

One of her helpers is Victor, a 23-year-old who Ndegwa met on the streets in 2010. She took him into the orphanage, put him through primary and secondary school and he is now in college studying engineering.

Over a video call, Victor declared his appreciation for Ndegwa and his gratitude for her place in his life. He said as a boy he was distrusting of anyone who came and preached on the streets, but Ndegwa ended up being different.

“Lucy is just a magical lady,” Victor said. “Despite being a religious leader, she’s a really loving mommy. Before I see her as a religious leader, I see her as a mother.”

Kennedy Wailimu, one of the first seven boys to come to the Gathiga in 1996, echoed Victor’s sentiments on the quality-of-care Ndegwa provides.

“We call it home. We don’t call it the orphanage. We call it home,” Wailimu said in a video call.

Wailimu has worked closely with Paint Our Future over the past few years in communicating with artists and aiding in the creation of the tech center, built in 2019. Wailimu said the tech center has been significant in preparing students for higher education.

The center gives students the opportunity to Zoom with people and educators across the world and improves their computer access. It cost about $2,500 USD and is about 15 feet by 20 feet. Green said the entire construction took just 10 days to complete.

On a video chat with both the Henrico Citizen and Green, Walimu said, “If it wasn't for the facility, if it wasn’t for people like you, Mr. Green, I don't know if I would see tomorrow. I don't know if I would have seen today.”

While still fully committed to helping the orphanage, Green has a new goal on his agenda: further the development of Project Moran, a six-month intensive global virtual cybersecurity training program for students of African descent. He’s using some of the proceeds from Paint Our Future to fund this effort.

The project launched with a six-person pilot program at the beginning of 2023, and Green hopes to attract more students for the next round. People of African descent only make up 3% of the cyber security industry, he said, and his goal is to help a new generation of children see that there’s a place for them in the field.

When asked about what motivates him to forge his own path in helping others, Green said he does it all for the next generation.

“The effect of getting folks into cyber where there’s a job shortage, and with that higher pay… not only impacts students’ lives directly, but potentially their children and other members of their family.”

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For details about Paint Our Future, click here.