Joy Hunter of Woodland Hills had been on charitable trips to Africa before.

This time was different.

"The anticipation I had was that I would have an in-depth look at another culture and give good service and have a nice adventure, but little did I know it would turn out to be so much more than that," said Hunter, one of 17 volunteers who paid their own way to Kenya in February on behalf of the Utah County-based charity Africa Is Life Changing, Inc., which supports job training for women in Kenya, among other projects.

"We would scoop up these little orphans with grimy noses and dirty clothes and we didn't care," Hunter said. "We just wanted to do anything we could to relieve the distress and poverty that we saw. This was a real spiritual journey for me as well as for so many others in the group. It just kindled in us this change as we would go out to serve each day."

During two weeks the group held six medical clinics treating 1,500 children and 500 adults, said Hunter, who is a dietitian with the Utah County Health Department.

"We had a medical team with four nurses, and we took bags and bags of medical supplies with us," she said. "The lines would wrap around the building, and we would have to turn people away. We could not see enough of them."

A good pair of shoes in Kenya costs about 75 cents but that is out of reach for the poorest residents, who walk barefoot, only to have their feet infested with bugs called jiggers, said Africa Is Life Changing, Inc founder Vicki Nielsen of Alpine.

"The jiggers burrow up into the bottom of their feet and lay eggs, and they have to use safety pins to pop them out," she said.

The group bought 300 pairs of shoes and had to use guards to keep a mob from forming as they fitted them to three or four children at a time, she said.

In addition to holding child birthing and AIDS prevention classes and giving away beans and maize to relieve 1,500 drought-stricken residents of the Athi River shantytown, the group set up a poultry farm, enabling locals to establish an egg business, and taught local women how to turn discarded plastic shopping bags, which litter the landscape like snow, into plastic yarn which can be woven into market bags and sold.

"The whole focus is to make them self-reliant, not to give charity but to empower them to rise above and help themselves out," Hunter said.

The group also spent time doing medical exams on 22 young Masai girls who had run away from their tribe to escape female circumcision which is ritually performed at age 9, Nielsen said. The girls now live in the Seganini boarding school, their upkeep sponsored in part by donations from Utah County.

Donations made mainly by Utah County residents during the Christmas holiday allowed the charity to purchase 6.5 acres of land where, with further donations, they will build a high school boarding school and adult trade school to teach literacy and small business skills, Nielsen said.

The 22 girls will be the first to graduate from the eighth -- and last -- grade at the school next year and unless a high school boarding school is built, those girls have little option but to return to their tribe, Nielsen said.

Africa Is Life Changing, Inc.,, a Utah County-based nonprofit organization with no paid staff, is looking for donations to help the people of Kenya. The group is building a boarding school for Masai girls and will lead volunteer trips to Kenya in Oct. 2006, March 2007 and Oct. 2007. Donations are used to buy supplies in Kenya, where they are cheaper, do not have to be transported and support the local economy.

$20 buys 35 pairs of shoes, or sewing kits for a sustainable microbusiness.

$40 a month for a year ensures a place at a guarded boarding school for a girl escaping ritual female circumcision.

$100 buys enough antibiotic to treat 500 children.

$200 buys a treadle sewing machine, material and training for a woman to start a small business.

$75,000 is needed for construction of a high school boarding school, and trade school for adults.

To volunteer for the Oct. 2006 expedition to Kenya, or later expeditions, click on "applications" at www.AfricaIsLifeChanging.org.

For information about Africa Is Life Changing, Inc., call Vicki Nielsen at 787-8420 or e-mail africakid1@yahoo.com.

Donations can be mailed to Africa Is Life Changing Inc., 1192 East Draper Parkway, Suite 255, Draper, UT 84020.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B1.