An act of private diplomacy more than 50 years ago still benefits the children and families of Kanyariri, a rural community near Nairobi.

As it became clear in the late 1950s that Kenya would achieve independence, the need for a well-educated middle class to run the upcoming civil service was evident. Julius Kiano and Tom Mboya, the two men who saw the need, realised they would have to look to the US for help.

While America was enjoying a period of unparalleled prosperity, it was also in the middle of a great transition. The long battle for civil rights for blacks was coming to a head: The Supreme Court ruled against segregation in the classroom and Martin Luther King undertook an effective campaign of nonviolent resistance to its broader practice. Then, the Soviet Union’s ability to beat the Americans into space with a satellite shocked the leadership because it threatened their Cold War strength.

The answer was education, it seemed, as the country’s children took to their math and science books. America was focused on a brave new world and learning, in all its facets, was its answer to the challenge. That focus would soon extend outside its borders.

Yet Kenya was a source of consternation to the American government. Though slated for independence, it was still a British colony. Moreover, the Republican State Department feared the Mau Mau uprising as the beginning of a leftist inroad in East Africa. They offered little pubic help for Kenya’s need to educate. Since the British had blocked higher education from most Africans from Kenya’s earliest days as a protectorate, the nation faced a dearth of people who could take over and maintain government services when the British finally retreated. It seemed a stalemate that could cost Kenya dearly.

For some years, Kenyan students had filtered into the US by writing to every American school whose catalogue they could find until someone enrolled them. Now, thanks in large part to Kiano and Mboya, the effort became more organised. A group of influential Americans who had long supported civil rights saw a need to extend their interests to black Africans. Working as the African-American Students Foundation, they canvassed American colleges and universities for scholarships and paid to bring less than 100 students to the US in 1959.

When the US government refused a request to transport students in 1960 because Kenya was still a British colony, Mboya convinced John F. Kennedy to use a family foundation to pay for air charters for 250 students. Estimates vary, but eventually as many as 2,000 young men and women from East Africa used this bridge to learning.

One of these students was Henry Chege, a 1959 arrival. Chege studied in California and eventually retired as corporate secretary of British Oxygen Co. in Nairobi. He never forgot the miracle that education had wrought in his life and he saw no reason to wait for government to do the job for others. After all, it had been a private effort that assured his future.

This visionary determined to recreate that dream with a non-profit community school in his mother’s former house in Kanyariri, where he was reared. With the help of his wife Miriam Wanjiru, a 1960 airlift student, he opened the school as a kindergarten in 1995, naming it Mary Nyanjega Academy after his mother. It soon became a day and boarding school through eighth grade for 330 students. When Chege died in 2006, his last wish was that Mrs. Chege continues the operation on behalf of the community, as she has.

A number of those who mounted the initial diplomatic effort in the 50s have grown old and died. Yet their determination to educate young Kenyans thrives today down a dusty, leafy road where once a young Henry Chege played.