Standing at a podium and smiling, Felina Alumande spoke to her fellow graduates at the BYU–Pathway Completion Ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya — the country’s first-ever Church education graduation ceremony on April 25.
In a local meetinghouse, 140 Kenyan students watched Alumande, the valedictorian, as she said:
“We are not just graduates, we are evidence that education can bring change — evidence that faith and education together can change lives. Evidence that when determination meets purpose, miracles happen.”
BYU-Pathway Worldwide, a part of the Church Education System, offers spiritually based, online, affordable education to almost 100,000 students in more than 200 countries.
Of the students watching Alumande, some completed bachelor’s degrees, some associate’s degrees, and others finished the “pathway track” from BYU–Pathway Worldwide, Africa Church Newsroom reported.
“This journey was not easy,” Alumande said, describing the scenes of students studying by candlelight, without data, with power outages or even sharing devices — or no devices at all.
“Some balance school, work, family and Church services and responsibilities … and yet we kept going," she said. “We showed up when it was uncomfortable. We believed, sometimes barely, that something better was ahead.”
The graduation ceremonies — Kenya’s first-ever and Uganda’s first in the city of Jinja — mark a new chapter in the Church Education System’s effort to create opportunities for students that traditional universities never could.
The program has “given me access to remote opportunities which I otherwise wouldn’t have, and it’s changed and improved the quality of my life in a great way,” said Kennedy Githami, another student and recent convert to the Church who is awaiting his mission call.
“BYU-Pathway is God’s gift to Africa, and as Africans we should take care of it and just excel in our studies,” he added.
In the neighboring western country of Uganda, another 196 students celebrated education milestones, according to the Africa Church Newsroom.
For the first time ever in Jinja, Uganda, students were invited to a graduation ceremony for the 35 students receiving degrees and the 161 students receiving certificates from BYU–Pathway Worldwide’s PathwayConnect program.
Those who received certificates are required to complete three core areas of focus — life skills, professional skills and university skills — then are recognized as “ready” to move forward with a degree program with Ensign College or BYU—Idaho.
Paul Mwiru, a member of the Ugandan Parliament, congratulated the students on their faith-based education, saying: “Education without good morals leads to unemployable graduates.”
For the 338 combined graduates across both countries, these good morals were embedded in their studies.
Alumande, the valedictorian who spoke at Kenya’s graduation ceremony, left students with a charge that expands beyond her country’s borders:
“This is just the beginning. Today is not the finish line; it is the launching point,” she said. “As we move forward, let us carry this truth with us; we are capable, we are prepared, we are children of God, we are just getting started.”
