As a physical therapist, Dr. Victor Erude Lidaywa thinks a lot about movement and accessibility. Last year, he returned to his native Kenya to visit St.
Michael’s Primary School in Kilifi County, and the school’s lack of crucial infrastructure for its disabled students made a sharp impression on him. St.
Michael’s Special Needs Unit serves 36 learners with disabilities, but lacks several basic amenities those students need, including mobility aids like walkers and wheelchairs, hearing aids, and basic learning materials like pencils and books. Victor was especially disturbed by the lack of accessible toilets.
“All they’ve got now is a pit latrine,” Victor remarked. “We’re talking about people who cannot stand. They have to crawl in this filthy environment just to use the bathroom.”
But here, Victor also saw opportunity. On September 5, Victor and his colleagues from the Gladys Erude Organization will stage the fifth annual Gladys Erude Memorial Run in Kilifi County, Kenya. Charitable donations from the run will go towards St. Michael’s Special Needs Unit, and the first thing they intend to build are new toilet facilities designed to be accessible for the school’s disabled learners.
Locals from Macomb and the surrounding area may recognize Victor from AGE Rehab & Medical Fitness, his physical therapy practice. Victor moved to America from Kenya in the 1990s and got his bachelor’s degree from WIU in 2005. After receiving his doctorate from the University of Michigan, he returned to Macomb to raise a family with his wife Laura and to establish his practice. In addition to his work as a physical therapist, Victor also serves as the CEO and chairman of the Gladys Erude Organization, a nonprofit charity named in honor of his late mother (as was AGE Rehab & Medical Fitness, in fact. The acronym “AGE” is a rearrangement of her initials: Gladys Adisa Erude). Incorporated in 2022, the nonprofit’s mission statement is to “empower women and children in underserved communities across Kenya by expanding access to education, essential services, and opportunities that foster dignity, resilience, and self-reliance.”
The Gladys Erude Organization carries on the work of Mrs. Erude herself, who passed away on August 5, 2021. Born into colonial Kenya, she attended Kenyatta University as a young woman to pursue a degree in education, but dropped out when she became pregnant with Victor, the first of her six sons (several of whom now sit on the organization’s board of directors). Her husband and Victor’s father, Dickson Daniel Erude, perished to diabetes in 1976 when Victor was only four years old. After his death, Gladys sent Victor and his brothers to be raised by her mother while she attended the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication to pursue a degree in journalism. She became a famous radio producer for the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, and many Kenyans today still remember her voice from her dispatches. Following her retirement in the late 1990s, Gladys became involved with philanthropic work and in 2001 founded the Gladys Erude Foundation, the immediate predecessor of the Gladys Erude Organization. Throughout both her journalistic and philanthropic careers, Gladys showed a deep concern for women’s and children’s issues, a priority still reflected in the values of the Gladys Erude Organization today.
In the past, the nonprofit pursued its mission in Western Province, Kenya, where Victor’s family originated. Previous philanthropic projects include the construction of a new roof for the Tigoi Primary School. Following from Gladys Erude’s concern for women’s issues, the organization also observes an ongoing commitment to distribute menstrual pads for schoolage girls throughout parts of rural Kenya, where these products are scarce. Without proper menstrual pads, young women are forced to rely on less sanitary alternatives like old bits of cloth and plants and sometimes will miss school out of embarrassment.
To fund these projects, every year the Gladys Erude Foundation hosts a charity 5K: The Gladys Erude Memorial Run. This 5K is open to all and typically sees a few hundred runners in attendance. Previously the run took place in Western Province, but this year it will happen in Kilifi County where St. Michael’s is located. The organization estimates participation this year to be about 500 runners, the largest number they’ve ever seen. Runners will come from several countries including the United States, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates as well as from within Kenya itself. In addition to casual participants, the race has been known to attract serious distance runners. One such runner is Brian Nyaga Njeru, a marathoner who has previously competed in the Chartered Nairobi Marathon, the Nairobi City Marathon, and the Kilimanjaro Marathon in Tanzania. This will be the second year Njeru has run the Gladys Erude Memorial Race. Last time he took the bronze medal, but Njeru stressed that competition isn’t the reason why he attends: “The GEM run is a good initiative because it helps the needy kids. This reminds us to give back to the community,” Njeru said. “The charitable projects rehabilitate dilapidated schools and empower the less privileged.”
Gladys Erude and her six sons.
Gladys Erude
Brian Nyaga Njeru at Gladys Erude Memorial Run
This year, the Gladys Erude Organization hopes to take in $12,000 in donations for the run. They need about $5000 to construct the bathroom, and hopes to use the remaining $7000 to fund other projects for St. Michael’s. They hope to lay the foundation for a new dormitory to be built next year. This dormitory will serve to house the disabled students at the school, which Victor stressed would be a large relief for both students and their parents, who struggle to get the kids to school every day.
“It’s a struggle because they have to put a kid who’s physically challenged on a motorbike because that’s the only way to get them to school,” Victor said. “It’s not the most comfortable position: you have a kid who cannot support themself on a motorbike, so the parent is holding this kid and driving for like three, four miles just to get to school every day.”
The organization also hopes to provide much needed water access for the school by drilling a borehole and installing a pump. Like many parts of rural Kenya, Kilifi County suffers from water scarcity. UNICEF estimates that only 59% of Kenyans have access to clean drinking water (and only 29% have access to improved sanitation facilities). While water scarcity has been a deep issue in Kenya for decades, it was recently worsened by the USAID cuts perpetrated last year by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Reporting from Bloomberg indicates that around 90% of USAID programs for water security and sanitation worldwide have been canceled, including 26 water projects in Kenya alone. The gutting of government foreign aid means that support from private charities like the Gladys Erude Organization is more crucial than ever.
The Gladys Erude Organization plans to use the opportunity of the run to help the people of Kilifi County in other ways. The organization tries to locally source labor by, for example, hiring local cooks to provide meals for the run and local builders for construction work so that the money can go into the community. The organization also takes the opportunity of the run to distribute clothing, menstrual pads, and other products. They also bring doctors to provide free medical screenings. Every year, Victor reports, they get lots of people who attend the event just for the free checkup, and they’ll usually end up giving referrals for two to three cases of cancer that would otherwise have gone undetected.
Because of their good work, the organization has managed to cultivate quite a good reputation inside Kenya, which doesn’t come without its headaches, Victor said. Local politicians, for example, will often try to exert influence on the organization and take advantage of its image to boost their own, attempting to transform the Memorial Run into a campaign rally. “Going into an election season, everybody wants to tag in their name,” Victor said.
The Gladys Erude Organization has also had problems with corruption. While American donations are generally safe because of requirements for documentation of all funds received, Kenya has much looser requirements when it comes to reporting income, and its easier for that money to get misappropriated. Victor confided a case in 2024 where a board member received a donation from a bank of about 250,000 Kenyan shillings (about 2000 U.S. dollars). Instead of putting it into the organization’s account, however, she embezzled the funds and used them to pay legal fees for a personal court battle she was embroiled in. Afraid of discovery, this board member eventually came forward to admit that she took the money.
The member still sits on the board of directors today. Victor indicated that they decided to let her stay because of previous good work and charitable donations of her own that she’d made. “We asked what Mom would do in that situation, and we decided to show her grace,” Victor said. At time of writing, the board member has repaid 200,000 shillings of the 250,000-shilling total.
Despite these struggles, the Gladys Erude Organization continues to provide much needed and much appreciated support to the people of Kenya. In the course of reporting this article, I got in touch with Chris Karisa, the special education teacher for St. Michael’s Primary School, and asked him how his school got in contact with the Gladys Erude Organization and what it’s meant for them.
“By God’s grace, miraculously, we met the Gladys Erude Organization through an [alumnus], Julius Ngombo, who informed the charity about our challenges and even made an effort to bring charity members to the school,” Mr. Karisa commented. “They witnessed each and every challenge for themselves. Looking at the special needs children and the challenges facing them, some of the charity members, including Victor, could not hold back tears.”
Want to get involved in the Gladys Erude Memorial Run? Those interested in running but can’t make the trip to Kenya are invited to participate virtually by registering with the website and tracking a run you did at home. Readers can also donate, and as an IRS-qualified 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations to the Gladys Erude Organization may qualify for tax deduction purposes. The run will be livestreamed on September 5 starting at 8 AM in Kilifi, or 12 AM central time. The Gladys Erude Organization can be found online at the following addresses: Webpage: https://www.gladyserudeorganization. org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ thegladyserudeorganization Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ thegladyserudeorganization/
Victor with St Michaels students and staff
