Kenya may be 9,000 miles from Utah Valley, but that country's descent into chaos is hitting close to home for two local humanitarian organizations.

More than 1,000 Kenyans were killed and 300,000 displaced following December elections there that both major political factions claimed to win. With the violence escalating, the rivals agreed in February to share power -- but then wrangled for weeks over how to divide up their coalition cabinet, according to Associated Press reports.

On Thursday, Kenya's opposition leader was sworn to office as prime minister as part of a power-sharing deal. Within hours, a feared gang promised to stop its campaign of terror in the capital, a sign that healing could begin in this fragile nation. A key U.S. ally and regional economic and military powerhouse, Kenya was one of the most stable nations in East Africa for years. But the disputed elections laid bare frustrations over poverty, corruption and ethnic rivalries, according to the AP. Many in Kenya scrape by in polluted slums on less than a dollar a day.

To combat that poverty, Bret Van Leeuwen of Alpine founded Koins for Kenya after first traveling to the country with another aid group in 2001. He returned from his latest trip to Kenya on Thursday with 15 humanitarian volunteers. The group helped build a school for 30 disabled Kenyan children, with plans to expand to 70 children over time, and planted 5,000 trees, among other projects. His organization now educates 7,000 children in 13 schools in Kenya.

Africa Is Life Changing Inc., on the other hand, has cancelled its plans to take a group of volunteers to its Kenyan school in May, choosing now to divert to Tanzania instead, for safety reasons.

Both groups said their decisions to take volunteers over were based entirely on the geographic location of their work. Africa Is Life Changing, which educates 120 children on its 6.5-acre campus, has been harder hit by the violence. Its all-girls boarding school has begun housing some of its male students in recent months because it was simply too dangerous for the boys to travel back and forth to school. A four-room lodge meant to house volunteers that go there for weeks at a time is now filled with refugees, as are two empty chicken coops made with stone walls. School expansion plans have been curtailed in lieu of feeding starving locals, said co-founders Vicki Nielsen and Gloria Terry.

Mary Warutumo, a native Kenyan who is Africa Is Life Changing's in-country director, described the situation this way in an e-mail to Nielsen and Terry provided to the Daily Herald: "We are receiving clash victims from the affected areas and we have to accommodate them and feed them because they have nothing to themselves except themselves. Victims are camping in churches and well-wishers are feeding them. ... There are so many needy people."

Africa Is Life Changing had helped a group of squatters living in cardboard homes to start an egg business, providing them chicks and feed. The matured chickens had just started to lay eggs, finally producing an income, when tribal marauders arrived to torch the makeshift refugee camp.

"All the (cardboard) houses around the chicken coop burnt down but the Lord spared the chickens," Warutumo wrote.

Both groups said their schools are designed to be self-sustaining and will weather the political crisis as long as violence does not spread or escalate. Both groups require their schools to keep a 60-day supply of food on hand for students and staff, and both organizations grow food at school sites.

Van Leeuwen said Koins for Kenya has approached its work differently than most, choosing to work only within eight villages in a 125-square-kilometer area located an hour outside Mombasa.

No outside organization can work within Kenya without local tribal approval, and from the beginning, Van Leeuwen said, he made it clear to locals that he would permanently suspend all operations of Koins for Kenya if violence, theft or any other disturbance threatened the work. In addition to providing schools, water projects and full college scholarships to qualified students, Koins for Kenya owns a tractor and plows hundreds of acres for local farmers who would otherwise have to till by hand. The operation greatly increases farm yields and income and as such the locals are highly invested in the ongoing success of the group. The result is that there has not been a single incidence of violence in the area, he said.

"Koins for Kenya is such an integral part of the community that we are more powerful than the Kenyan government there," he said. "We were able to say we don't vote with machetes, we vote with pencils, and they live by those rules even though we have people of both [warring] factions in our area."

Nevertheless, Van Leeuwen likened Kenya's election to Hillary Clinton winning the 2008 election and President Bush subsequently refusing to give up the presidency. Powersharing between the rival factions is not likely to prove a long-term solution and more chaos may be on the horizon, he said.

Both organizations said a growing global food crisis, driven by escalating food and fuel prices, is also playing a part in the unrest in Kenya and it is too early to tell how that crisis might be resolved. Both organizations agreed that if food and fuel prices continue to rise, the consequences on humanitarian aid could be critical.

For information on Koins for Kenya, visit www.KoinsforKenya.org/blog. The group is especially interested in Eagle Scout and group volunteer projects.

For information on Africa Is Life Changing, Inc., visit www.africaislifechanging.org or call 787-8420. The group's annual Angels For Africa Benefit will be held today at 6:30 p.m. at La Caille Restaurant. Tickets are available at the door.