AKIN was created in 2007 by Paul Miller, in response to a need that arose when 240 children were displaced as a result of the closing of the children’s boarding school, The St. Francis Integrated School, in Nairobi, Kenya.
The St. Francis Integrated School was overcrowded with children as young as two years old and teens well beyond their puberty. These children had been brought to the school by adults who no longer could care for them. Some of the children had been living there for four-five years. Hygiene was poor and disease had begun to take its toll on the health of all residents. Although called a school, no real education was taking place, and the children’s lives were headed in a dangerous direction.
Citizens from several Western nations, including United States, Great Britain, Australia and Norway, came together in an informal coalition to try to raise funds to support St. Francis Integrated School, but it was too late. The Kenyan Government had been observing conditions there and took action to close the school and return the children to their villages, leaving them in the care of anyone willing to assume responsibility.
In a hastily planned meeting in April 2007, the citizens of the different nations, who had been working to raise funds in support of St. Francis Integrated School, met at Karen Blixen cottages to plan a response to the government’s actions. An arrangement was reached. The younger children would be assisted by the Thomas Barnados Agency from Great Britain, while the children who had sat for KCPE exams the previous November, but lacked the funds to attend secondary school, would be assisted by A.K.I.N., a new organization. In May 2007, registration of A.K.I.N. began in United States.