Here at St Andrew’s School, Turi, we seek to grow gracious and compassionate leaders for our very needy world. Love-in-Action, our Prep School charity, is at the heart of this endeavour.

Once every term, we have a Love-in-Action Charity Day. On this day pupils and teaching staff wear home clothes, hear a presentation about the activities of the charity within our local community, share a simple lunch of ugali (cornmeal mush) and Sukuma Wiki (collard greens), give some of our resources to the charity and gather together to pray for all in need.

We do these things not to tick a box or so that we can feel good but firstly because we seek to imitate Jesus who gave up everything, even his place with God, and accepted the role of a servant (Phil. 2:7). He humbled himself to dwell among us, the needy. Secondly, we are intentionally compassionate in response to Christ’s call for us to give the hungry something to eat, the thirsty something to drink, the refugees somewhere to nest, the unclothed something to wear, the sick something to make them feel better and to the prisoners something to make them smile (Matt. 25:35-40).

Our Love in Action Charity Day is about meeting the needs of the less privileged. The lunch shared on this day is an act of denial to identify with those in our local community for whom lunch, any lunch, is a luxury. It is for us an act of following the Lord as he walks in the dirt of our fallen world; calling us to love sincerely and to put our love in action.

Rev Ben Shikwati

Assistant School Chaplain