Elizabeth Wanjiku Chege felt lucky to finish high school. Most girls born in the 1960s in Nakuru County, Kenya, where she is from, never completed their education. Back then, boys’ education was prioritized: It was assumed that daughters would marry and leave the family, while sons would work to support it.

But Elizabeth, who is now 58, was determined to finish. Since childhood, she felt compelled to care for the sick and spent hours sharing her dream of becoming a nurse with her sister.

After high school, Elizabeth enrolled at Kenya Medical Training College in Kisii and earned a certificate in nursing. During the following years, she strengthened her skills in a variety of settings, from the Ministry of Health to Nakuru General Hospital to a clinic specializing in women’s care.

Then, in 2012, she saw a newspaper advertisement for a network of franchise clinics bringing high-quality primary health care to families in areas that badly needed it. CFWclinics was recruiting a nurse to serve at a company-owned clinic where new ideas and practices were tested. During the five years Elizabeth worked there, she gained the experience needed to own and operate the clinic as a franchisee-owner. In 2017, she took over Mwea CFW Clinic as her own business.

Elizabeth feels most fulfilled when building long-term trust and relationships with her patients. She recalls one man who came to her in the middle of a hypoglycemic crash. He was unable to pay to go to the hospital, but Elizabeth was able to treat him with an IV on the spot. Some time later, he came back with his family to pay for the treatment she had provided. As he thanked her, he told her how much it meant to him to find a provider he trusted and could afford to see. More of his family members started coming to her clinic. They referred to her as their “Doctor.”

NURSE CHEGE EXAMINES HER PATIENT

Elizabeth said her community prefers her CFW Clinic to other options because they believe she administers good treatment, handles them with care, and dispenses reliable drugs. She takes time to listen to them and offers free counsel. When patients are too sick or old to come to her, she visits them at home and regularly follows up until the patient is well. She spends time educating people in the community about preventing malaria, diarrhea, worms, typhoid, and other ailments she commonly sees.

Elizabeth has become a role model and treasures encouraging younger generations. She makes a point to teach them that all dreams are valid.

She lives with her husband, John, and is the proud mother of a son and a daughter, both of whom she has put through school. Decades after Elizabeth fought to finish high school, her daughter is now studying at Mount Kenya University.

When Tasiana Njeru was a young girl, she liked to observe the workers at the local hospital. She noticed the way they took care of people and successfully healed them, and the way the community respected them in turn. She wanted to be like them.

Tasiana was born in 1964 to a family of 11 children in a poor, farming region of Embu County. She wanted to attend college after completing high school in 1984, but stayed home when her family was unable to pay the fees.

She eventually saved enough money to attend Nkubu Nursing School in Meru County and became a community health nurse. She was posted to multiple locations through the Catholic Mission service, but as the years stretched out she became homesick. She wanted to heal the people of her own community.

In 1995, Tasiana opened a clinic in her hometown called Tender Loving Care. She loved the work, but business was hard. Other clinics in the area offered similar services, and not always to the standards Tasiana aspired to. They were hard to compete with.

One day, Tasiana met another nurse named Evangeline who operated her own CFW Clinic. Evangeline told her the CFWclinics network was recruiting franchisees; and that the organization could help her improve her practice and better operate the business.

In 2004, Tasiana worked with Healthstore Foundation officers to convert her existing clinic into a CFW Clinic. She attended classes and received comprehensive training on all the aspects of running a franchise clinic. “What surprised me is that, due to their standards, I can manage my clinic financially, stock the clinic adequately with quality drugs, and learn good customer care standards—which is very difficult if one is working without support as a healthcare practitioner,” she later reflected.

Tasiana has since gone on to earn a higher diploma and qualifiy as a health, medical, and psychological counselor, a role that has helped her manage patients more holistically. Most of the people in her rural farming community come to her with ailments like respiratory infections, worms, hypertension, and arthritis. She gives talks on disease prevention at local churches and schools, and makes home visits to people who are unable to reach her clinic. Sometimes she is faced with medical needs beyond her capabilities, and refers those patients to higher-level care. Once, for example, a man stumbled into her clinic, struggling to see and reeling from spiking blood sugar levels. Tasiana stabilized his blood sugar and diagnosed him with diabetes before placing him at a larger facility.

Owning her own franchise has given Tasiana financial stability, but what she finds most meaningful is the patients—like that man—who return to show her that they are now well.

Tasiana is married and is the mother of three children, with two surviving children now grown.

When Angelica Murangi Njiru was a child in the 1950s, her mother became severely ill. She needed an operation, and Angelica was terrified her mother would not survive. When she visited her in the hospital she could see how the nurses carried themselves with dignity and compassion. They were well dressed and looked so knowledgable, remarkably at ease with the demanding work of caring for patients like her mother. Because of their skill and dedication, Angelica’s mother lived. And though it was a time when girls had to fight for the opportunity to study, Angelica vowed to finish her education and become a nurse so that she could protect and revive the sick, too.

In 1970, Angelica began working as a midwife at a maternity home, followed by positions at a small Catholic hospital and a health center in the city of Embu, focusing her work on mobile outreach units. By 2006, she was ready to retire from public service. She had heard about CFWclinics from a colleague and, after 36 years of working for other organizations, was intrigued by the idea of running her own business. “Staying at home doing nothing was not an option for me,” she said.

She learned about a CFW Clinic just 2 kilometers from her home that had recently closed and was in need of a new franchisee-owner. On January 19, 2007, after six weeks of intensive training on owning and operating a CFW Clinic, Angelica launched Faith CFW Clinic. She has been running it ever since.

Angelica’s community is mostly made up of farmers—especially tea farmers—who come to her with common ailments: respiratory infections (for children, especially pneumonia), wounds, hypertension, and others. Sometimes, patients come needing emergency first aid; others, to obtain routine prescriptions. When patients in crisis arrive without money (the community suffers high rates of poverty), she agrees to receive payment later. Some honor the agreement; others can’t. Nevertheless, she continues treating everyone who comes to her with quality drugs and services.

Today, at 71, Angelica still feels a calling to serve her community.

Joyce Rukungu hopes to go home every day knowing she helped someone in a meaningful way. Like the mother who brought her child to Joyce’s Joy CFW Clinic after multiple hospital visits failed to make him well. He suffered severe spasms in the lungs’ airways and breathed in fast, raspy gasps. When Joyce treated his bronchospasm, he got better. His mother had been relieved to find Joy CFW Clinic, and over time her friends and relatives became Joyce’s patients, too. In their community in Manyatta, Kenya, Joyce, a registered nurse, is known as a “Doctor of Children.”

Joyce was born in 1954 in Muranga County, in Central Kenya, a rural region with rolling tea fields and high rates of poverty. One of her relatives, a doctor, influenced her interest in nursing and helped cultivate her passion for helping the sick. In 1977, Joyce completed a course at Muranga School of Nursing, where one of her teachers urged her to study further. In 1980, she enrolled in the nursing school at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.

Over the years, Joyce was posted in three different towns before she was transferred to Embu Hospital, where she worked in the maternity ward. While there, she was seriously injured in an accident and forced to resign because she could no longer make the long commute to work. She opened her own practice, Goodwill Clinic, near her home in Manyatta. The clinic did well—she even hired a nurse to help her run it. But when the nurse moved on, Joyce, still healing from her injury, struggled to manage the large clinic on her own and was forced to close it.

That’s when her friend, another nurse, told her about the advantages of working under the CFWclinics brand. Joyce could see the benefits that launching a franchise could offer: She would have access to quality drugs, delivered directly to her, and the support of a team that promised strict adherence to quality standards. In 2004, she launched Joy CFW Clinic, quickly earning a reputation in Manyatta for her professionalism and dedication. Her clients say they come to her because she takes time to really listen to their experiences and medical history, and her calm, open nature makes them comfortable. She’s known for treating each patient like a full human being.

Joyce also visits patients at home who cannot come to her clinic, sometimes over the course of years. One is a patient with arthritis, another suffers from a hip bone fracture, and a third has trouble with a thigh bone following a fall (the last, Joyce has been visiting for five years). Joyce feels that every visit is part of accomplishing what God has called her to do in this world.

Joyce is among the best performers in the CFWclinics network. In 2007, after her clinic completed an exemplary year, she was invited by Healthstore’s founder, Scott Hillstrom, to visit the United States, where she gave a talk on CFWclinics franchising at Michigan State University.

Joyce lives with her husband, John, with whom she has raised four daughters.

When Margaret Njeru, born in 1949, was growing up in Meru County in Eastern Kenya, her mother fell so ill she was admitted to the hospital. Margaret, still a child, spent much time at Chogoria Hospital, hoping her mother would get better. For long hours, she watched her mother’s skilled caretaker nurse her back to health. Margaret was struck with admiration. She promised herself she would make her dream of becoming a nurse—then, just a flicker—into a reality one day.

Margaret qualified as a nurse at Nkubu Nursing College, and began a long career in government hospitals that spanned from 1972-1997. In 2006, she started working for a colleague, Evangeline Kabiru, who was operating her own CFW Clinic. She was impressed by the work Evangeline accomplished in her community, both in treating the sick and running a successful business. Margaret decided to apply to run her own.

Owning and operating St. Nicholas CFW Clinic has provided Margaret and her family financial stability, but she is proudest of being able to guarantee her patients the best care possible. They trust her expertise and access to good medicine, and know that she has a robust referral process if their cases become more serious. Margaret’s role is often that of a first responder. Recently, a patient came to her in the middle of a severe asthmatic attack, for which he needed emergency drugs. Margaret was able to save him. If her clinic had not been conveniently located and stocked with appropriate medicine, she reflected, the outcome would have been different.

“The organization is friendly, they have quality drugs, they give us direction, supervise our work to help us improve quality, and they assist in payment of medical licenses,” she said of the benefits of working with the CFWclinics brand. With their help, she said, “I am making sure that my little contribution helps in improving the quality of health services in my community.”

Margaret is married and has raised 7 children. Today, at 73, she treasures time with her many grandchildren.