It's December, which means end-of-year giving season is upon us. At Made in the Streets, it's no secret that we depend heavily on end-of-year giving to make our goals and balance our budget. 

​Turn your giving into a gift
What if you could give the perfect last-minute gift and make a difference for the world’s most vulnerable children?  Give a gift of hope in honor of your friends or family!  Your loved one will be thrilled to know that their impact on you prompted you to be generous toward street children in Kenya. 

Help yourself out this tax season
Whether it’s due to your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from your Retirement Accounts or Capital Gains taxes on appreciated stock or simply to reduce your current Federal Income Tax liability, gifts given to MITS by December 31 make a positive impact on next year’s income tax filings.
Give now to receive credit for your charitable donations in 2018 and help reduce your taxes in 2019 >>

Need some guidance on how to make your end-of-year gifts, including stock transfers?
To find out how to initiate year-end stock gifts to MITS, contact our accountant, Ericka >> ericka@madeinthestreets.org

​Get educated
For more information on how Giving to MITS can possibly reduce your tax requirements, check out these helpful articles:

• Wall Street Journal: The Secret Way Seniors Can Keep Deducting Gifts to Charity
• Charity Navigator on the Tax Benefits of Giving
• Wade Carpenter on How to Effectively Offset Capital Gains with Charitable Contributions

Your generosity makes a difference in the lives of street kids!

God is good! Join us in congratulating all our graduates, listed below, and wishing them well as they transition into the world. ​

We asked our students and staff what they're grateful for, and here's what they said. 

Did you know Made in the Streets offers internships for college students (and college-aged individuals) with a desire to serve and a taste for adventure? There's more information on our Internships page, but in brief, here are the qualifications and requirements: 

• Internships last for 3 months or longer 
• Many internships are located at our facility in Kenya, but some are remote and can be held by individuals located anywhere around the world 
• All internships are volunteer (unpaid) staff positions 
• All in-Kenya interns must have completed their sophomore year of college or be 20 years of age or older when their internship begins 

by Christian Yoder, MITS administrative coordinator

Dr. Chad Stephens had his work cut out for him when he agreed to visit our Eastleigh Centre and provide medical aid to street kids. Many children on the streets have dire needs—gangrene, raw flesh, wounds that are three years old, cleaned and dressed, again. Due to lack of access to clean facilities or knowledge of proper wound care, they'll return to the centre with these same festering wounds multiple times. Our Eastleigh Centre staff have basic first aid training and can provide wound care, but it is rare for a doctor to visit the centre.

Trying to accurately depict Kenyan street life, as a filmmaker who grew up in middle class America, is almost an impossible challenge. But if you spend enough time at MITS, you’ll find that these students, and former street kids, have enough talent in their bones and courage in their hearts to share their stories with anyone who will listen—through songs and raps and spoken words. 

But “anyone who will listen” tends to be limited to talent shows in chapel every Thursday. And because God has written incredible stories of redemption into their souls, I firmly believe these kids need a wider platform than that. So with the encouragement of Irene, and the enthusiasm of one student in particular, I grabbed the one thing that could give these voices a stage they deserve—my camera.

Now, let me tell you about Peter: talented, well-spoken, brilliant, resilient. And his spoken word about growing up in the streets of Nairobi reflected all of that and more. He’s brutally honest and throughout his two-minute long poetically spoken piece, he humbly gives all of the glory to God. 

It was a challenge getting the audio just right—and we ended up having to re-film. It was a challenge finding an atmosphere with no noise and a challenge translating his slang Swahili into coherent English subtitles. It was a challenge filming on the streets of Eastleigh—making sure that the street kids in the video were shown with dignity and personality and hope.

And it was a challenge trying to make sure that Peter’s artistic vision for the piece came true. Because for this video, I was simply the messenger. 

And it was my favorite challenge yet.
​
Because of this humbling opportunity to videotape Peter, I am more aware than ever that the students here will always be the best voices for what God is doing in and through Made in the Streets. And I hope, so incredibly badly, that people will take the time to listen to these voices. For they are future world-changers. I’m sure of it. 

by Meredith Mansfield
MITS Filmmaker Intern

This was by far the hardest video I’ve ever made—and it lasts a total of 47 seconds.

But it was because we faced the streets—where it was dangerous to even be holding a camera. And where I got yelled at by the Eastleigh MITS staff to put my camera away almost all of the time I was there—even during two of the shots that made it into the film (though I cut them out). 

Because we traversed Nairobi to find a time-lapse shot of the sun going down. Which meant we had to go to and from the Kenyatta International Conference Centre twice. And we stayed on top of that building for two hours waiting for the sun to set, while Kaylee and Sloan got attacked by birds for having blonde hair and my camera battery died almost at the worst possible moment. 

Because we trekked 3 miles in the mud to get the shot of Charles blowing flour into the camera and Matua giving Alex a haircut. And while the hot mud made us exhausted and annoyed, I loved that day. Because I got to have Charles and Jeff argue over who was going to blow the flour into the camera and I got to help Ruby make rice for lunch. And Tua came up to me shortly after, telling me that he was cutting Alex’s hair in a bit and he wanted me to film it. Which, I did (of course) and that made it into the video too. ​

But my favorite part of making this project is getting to show the final product to my friends here. I remember Laban, one of the students at the learning center, watching my video and pointing at the streets kids in the very first few shots and exclaiming, “that was my base!” And thinking, Laban could’ve been in that shot, with all of the street kids, if he hadn’t made the choice to join MITS. All of them could’ve been still on the streets.

And now, they just seem completely transformed. They’re wearing uniforms and they’re studying and they’re basketball players and football (soccer) players and they’re dancing to Chris Brown and making dinner every day all together while playing jokes on me in the process. They’re servant-hearted and hilarious and for some reason, they let me be a part of their little family here. 

And the best part is that all I get to do these next few months is reveal parts of this new family, and parts of God’s transformative grace, to you through film. ​​

Meredith Mansfield is spending summer 2018 living at our facility in Kamulu, Kenya, and sharing our world with you through film as a Filmmaker Intern. Check out our other internships here >>