“Can you put a red carpet in my house?” she asked, eyes bright with possibility.

I was sitting in rural Kenya with a group of local women, talking about their financial dreams. One lady wanted a red carpet. Not a designer handbag. Not a luxury vacation. A red carpet for the concrete floor she doesn’t yet have—in the concrete house she’s still saving for.

This is my world now, and honestly? It wasn’t supposed to be.

How a British Family Ended Up Four Hours from a Decent Hairdresser

My family left the UK in January 2011. We thought we’d be back in three years. That was fourteen years ago.

We live in what I can only describe as properly rural Kenya, the kind of rural where you’re an hour from a supermarket and four hours from anything resembling civilization’s creature comforts. My husband pastors at a Christian boarding school, I teach there, and in whatever spare time I can carve out, I work as a Finance Coach through my business, Money and Marriage.

Most of my clients are in the US and UK. But recently, I had the chance to work with some local ladies, and that morning changed everything I thought I knew about money.

The Women Who Live on Less Than $4 a Week

Picture this: mud huts with mud floors. Tin roofs with holes that can’t be fixed. No running water: just a communal tap in the village where you collect everything you need in buckets. No electricity, because connecting to the power grid costs $3,000 USD upfront (and that’s before you pay $0.22 USD per unit).

These women earn 500 Kenyan shillings a week. That’s less than $4 USD.

When I asked them about their dreams, they didn’t mention vacations or new phones. They drew pictures of concrete houses with gardens and chickens. They dreamed of water coming from a tap in their own home. One woman’s eyes lit up when she imagined that red carpet on her future concrete floor.

The 15-Cent Revolution

We talked about savings. About creating little pots for different goals: school fees, emergencies, Christmas, and eventually, that concrete house.

Then we did something radical: we agreed they’d save 20 KES each week. That’s about 15 cents in US dollars.

Fifteen cents.

You know what happened? They got excited. A week later, they’d collected glass jars and decorated them, ready to start their savings journey. These women, who live in conditions most of us can’t imagine, were thrilled about saving fifteen cents a week.

I’m not going to lie, it was humbling in a way that made my throat tight.

What They Learned (And What I Learned)

A few weeks later, I checked in with them:

Teresia told me: “I now know how to budget. Before when I had the money I would go to the shops and buy snacks but now I don’t do that because I’m thinking about budgeting my money and what I really need it for.”

Susan said: “Now I plan not just for food but also emergencies. This is good because now I will have money for emergencies if I need it.”

Loice shared: “I have now learnt to save. I used to get money, spend it and then look for the next bit of money. Now I’ve learnt not to spend everything but to save for the future.”

These transformations? From a conversation about fifteen cents a week.

The Things We Take for Granted

When’s the last time you thought about turning on a light switch? Or getting water from your kitchen tap?

Here, there are no light switches to flip. People wash themselves and their clothes in the river. Water comes from a community tap that you walk to, carrying heavy plastic containers back home.

Kenya’s schools don’t teach financial literacy, so many people have never even considered the concept of savings. But the bigger issue is that when you’re living on $4 a week in a mud hut with a leaking roof, “savings” feels like a luxury for people in a different universe.

Except it’s not. And these incredible women proved it.

Bringing Light to the Darkness

This December, my husband is on a mission to literally bring light to people who have none.

He’s spent the last few years developing simple power systems: boxes that provide a 12-volt lighting circuit and a small inverter for devices like laptops. With these systems, families can light their homes and charge their cell phones. Basic things that transform everything.

He’s traveling across Kenya this holiday season to install as many of these life-changing boxes as possible. (You can watch how one “blackout buster” changed Nick’s life and his family’s in this video.)

Our Big Dream: Solar Power for Girls Who Deserve Better

Our ultimate goal? Installing solar panels at The Mango Tree, a girls’ boarding school in west Kenya.

Here’s why this matters: In Kenya, far too many adolescent girls drop out of school due to pregnancy, poverty, and lack of parental care. Day schools can’t protect these vulnerable girls from the challenges they face: men working as motorcycle taxi drivers, those in domestic work far from family, and the general absence of support that leaves thirteen to seventeen-year-olds exposed to abuse and sexual violence.

The Mango Tree provides a safe boarding environment with holistic care for these girls. An educated girl marries later, has fewer children, and gives those children a better start in life. This school is changing generational trajectories.

But here’s the challenge: regular power cuts across Kenya leave these students literally in the dark. The girls study at night, and for months now, they’ve been making do with security lights—hardly ideal for focused learning. Solar panels would free them from dependence on the unreliable national grid, giving them consistent lighting to study and build their futures.

The catch? It’s a large facility, and the solar panels needed will cost $10,000.

An Invitation

If this story has touched you, if it’s made you grateful for the water in your tap, the light at your fingertips, or the ability to save more than fifteen cents, please pray for us as we work to fund this project.

And if you feel moved to donate, every little bit genuinely helps. Click this link to donate.

Because I’ve learned something from these extraordinary women with their decorated glass jars and their dreams of red carpets: transformation doesn’t require big money. It requires intention, hope, and people who care enough to help.

Sometimes, it starts with just fifteen cents.