17/05/2026
The ripple effect of education and opportunity. 💜
A stranger's kindness saved Hilde Back's life by helping her to escape to Sweden from N**i Germany, where both her parents died in concentration camps. Back eventually became a teacher and, remembering her days as a Jewish girl in Germany when she was denied the opportunity to attend school under the N**i Nuremberg Laws, she decided to pay for the education of a child who would otherwise not have a chance to go to school. The child she sponsored was Chris Mburu, a brilliant student in rural Kenya from a poor family. On today's World Kindness Day, their story shows how even small acts of kindness can touch many lives in ways entirely unforeseen.
Though Mburu earned excellent grades, his family couldn't afford the small tuition fee required to continue his studies beyond elementary school. His academic promise led to his selection for a Swedish sponsorship program, where Hilde Back chose to pay his way through secondary school. Mburu continued to excel, going on to earn degrees from the University of Nairobi and Harvard Law School.
In order to help other talented children from poor families continue their studies at secondary school, Mburu created a foundation in 2001. With the support of the Swedish Ambassador in Kenya, Mburu was able to track down the benefactor who had transformed his life and named the foundation in her honor: The Hilde Back Education Fund.
Back's small act of kindness grew in ways that she never could have imagined. The Fund has now helped nearly 1,000 children in Kenya continue their studies and her sponsored child has gone on to become an attorney and human rights advocate for the United Nations. In 2012, Back had the opportunity to travel to Kenya with Mburu and celebrate her 90th birthday by meeting many of the children whose lives have been changed by the foundation that bears her name.
"If you do something good, it can spread in circles, like rings on the water," Back once said. She passed away in 2021, at the age of 98, leaving a legacy that continues to ripple outward through hundreds of transformed lives.
