In March 2006, Eugene Hillery from salesforce.com Dublin, together with Isabel Kelly, Salesforce Foundation, and Ronan Davy from Dublin law firm Matheson, Ormsby, Prentice (MOP), travelled to Kenya to spend a week with St.Martin's Girls' School in the Kibagare slum, outside Nairobi.
The School gives a home and wonderful education to some of the brightest girls from the slum and other underserved areas of Kenya; the standard of education they receive will entirely change their lives, and many will go on to create real social change in Kenya.
In the weeks before travelling, Eugene and Ronan worked hard to fundraise money for the school from colleagues at salesforce.com and MOP, and from friends and family. Together with a Foundation grant, the team were able to take €20,000 as a donation to the school, which will enable complete refurbishment of the school, including painting, new desks and chairs, books and equipment for the science lab.
During the week the visitors and teachers organized field trips for all the girls in years 1, 2 and 3 (160 girls in total) to Lake Nakuru National Park and to Nairobi National Park. The salesforce Film Club got some great footage of the days. Year 4 were taking exams during the week, so they got a surprise pizza party at lunchtime.
One of the girls told deputy head Eric Waweru, "you brought the best visitors, they didn't just choose a few girls to take on an outing, they took us all"! 
The field trips were a fantastic mixture of watching and learning about Kenyan wildlife, drinking sodas, having picnics, and getting to know each other. The girls are amazing at singing, and sang throughout the 3 hour bus journey to and from Lake Nakuru, making up songs about what they had seen and done. Most of the girls had never seen the wildlife before.
The salesforce team also spent time with three former St.Martin's pupils, who are now being sponsored to attend University by Salesforce Foundation. Kule Wario, Rosemary Mwaura and Mary Njeri are studying hard and doing very well. They are really leading by example, and returned to the school during the week to speak to all the current students to inspire them to work hard and succeed as they have done. Everybody is very proud of them!
Salesforce Foundation will now be coordinating opportunities for employees, and others, to sponsor school and University scholarships. There will also be possibilities for volunteering at the school in future.
Eugene, Ronan and Isabel were warmly hosted all week by Kule, Rose and Mary, by the girls and staff of St.Martin's and particularly by the school's headmistress, Sister Florentina, and deputy head Eric Waweru.
