About the Festival:

In February 2008, Evanston High School partnered with the nonprofit organization “Build African Schools” to bring the plight of children living in remote villages in southern Kenya to the forefront of the thoughts of our students and community.  This began as part of a 21st Century Skills initiative and was intended to bring global awareness to our little part of the world. The problems that confront African children on a daily basis such as little access to clean water, scarcity of food, HIV/Aids, no electricity or running water, no healthcare, and lack of education, are issues that we can hardly comprehend. 

Build African Schools founder, Patrick O’Sullivan, a retired computer executive, became an unlikely hero of providing educational resources to this impoverished part of the world. Upon a visit to southern Kenya, while vacationing in Africa, he was touched by the children’s overwhelming desire to learn in the midst of huge obstacles–no schools, no materials, itinerant teachers delivering instruction under a tree while students scratched out their lessons in the dirt.

Since meeting with Patrick, we established our own “Build African Schools Project” and spent two years raising money through penny drives, garage sales, concerts, and various small-town fundraisers to achieve our goal. We raised $35,000, which was matched by a private donor, allowing us to build the school.  Another of our goals was to spread awareness about how the acts of one small community in rural Wyoming can have a positive impact on the lives of hundreds of children halfway around the world.

Bluegrass Evanston was born out of the desire to maintain the connection between Ndatani school and Evanston, Wyoming.