Bbright gives children in Thailand and beyond hope of an education
Bbright gives children in Thailand and beyond hope of education
A mission trip to Thailand in 2019 brought Brenda Tenison of Peters Township face-to-face with a need. The trip was to assist at Faith House, a home and school for young women fleeing violence in Myanmar (formerly Burma).
“One of the things that I realized on that trip, and on all of the trips since then, is that children in Thailand are the same as our children. They have their dreams. They want a chance at an education and a life that they wouldn’t have without that education,” she said.
In 2021, she and her husband, Dave, launched the nonprofit Bbright, with the purpose of giving hope to children in desperate situations. Tenison, Bbright’s president, used her past experience running a nonprofit to help children with little hope of receiving an education.
In only five years, Bbright has expanded into Kenya and the Dominican Republic.
“We don’t own this land or operate these places, but we just come alongside and help. Education and feeding these children are our top priority. So the things that we do fall in line with that scope,” Tenison said.
“Last year we supported 650,000 meals for the 1,500 kids in these different countries. We helped provide 2.4 million hours of education for them,” she said.
Bbright will hold its “Shine” fundraiser at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, at Valley Brook Country Club with the Rev. Johnson Wambua of the African Inland Church Zion speaking. Tickets to the fundraiser are $75.
The nonprofit she created doesn’t just send money.
The Tenisons and members of the nonprofit’s board of directors make visits to the areas where Bbright serves.
“We like to make sure that we are checking in, asking, ‘What do you need?’ We’re seeing what’s going on. You know, we don’t just write a check. We have a relationship with these three ministries,” Tenison said.
In August, Tenison and her husband visited the schools Bbright supports in Kenya, Lion of Judah, serving children of the nomadic Maasai in Emali, and the African Inland Church Zion school serving the children in the Mathare slum, one of the poorest, most desperate and overcrowded areas in Nairobi.
The Tenisons met a young man who came to the Lion of Judah school two years earlier asking for work to help his family during the drought. The Rev. Johnson Wambua, who works with the two schools in Kenya, instead suggested he attend school.
David Kapailo Senkento, now 16, became a student. He began running and participating in school competitions. He continued to advance and after winning gold in both the Africa Youth Games 1500 meter men’s competition and in the Africa School Games in 2025, he went on to win silver in August at the U20 World Championships in Oregon this year. His goal, Tenison said, is to compete in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
“We are super excited to watch his story unfold as he continues to compete and get better and grow,” Tenison said.
While Senkento’s story is exceptional, attending school in Kenya for many children is limited and exceptional in itself.
Mathare is the second largest slum in Nairobi, with 500,000 people living in one square mile with no running water, power or sewer system, Tenison said.
“So these children have access to an education and they walk through the slum, which is a violent place,” said Tenison about AIC Zion.
“If these children can graduate from high school, then they can change the whole life of their family by lifting them out of that type of poverty,” she continued.
“We feed two meals a day to those 630 students. Typically, they will take half of that meal home to their siblings who aren’t at the school and would have nothing to eat that day,” Tenison said.
Bbright recently completed a dorm at the school in Emali for about 250 girls. “There are 85 girls at that school right now who are being saved from forced marriages in the tribe,” Tenison said.
Bbright’s first effort began with educating girls.
At Faith House in Thailand, where Tenison took her mission trip, the goal is to help displaced children from Myanmar, Thailand’s war-torn neighbor to the west, providing food, clothing shelter, Christian discipleship and education.
“There are 50 girls at Faith House right now. You know, we believe they’re being saved from being trafficked because if not, they would be destitute out on the street and very vulnerable,” Tenison said.
With assistance from Bbright, nearly a dozen girls have graduated from college as of this spring with degrees ranging from economics and public health to aviation management.
Partnering with The King’s Kids RD, Bbright expanded most recently into the Dominican Republic.
Violence in Haiti has pushed Haitian refugees into the Dominican where they have no money, jobs or places to live and don’t speak the language.
Bbright supports an after-school tutoring program, preschool classes, and a weekly youth Bible club.
“The team there is teaching them Spanish so that when they go to school they can have a better chance of learning, because Creole and Spanish are nothing alike,” said Tenison.
Washington County Commissioner Electra Janis, one of the eight board members with Bbright, visited the Dominican school earlier this year.
“It was very beneficial for me that I speak Spanish,” she said about her trip to the school, “because you have a huge language barrier.” Janis was able to communicate with the families, hear their struggles and was amazed at “the amount of gratitude that they have that you’re there, that you’re visiting, that you care, that you want to help them,” she said.
The “Shine” fundraiser will give supporters a glimpse into Bbright’s work and the children it helps.
For more information, visit https://www.bbright.org/about/ or on Facebook or LinkedIn/.