Last August, Brother Augustine (Gus) Nicoletti, FSC, D.Min., Ed.D., vice president for mission, traveled to Kenya for a friends and family service trip in support of a Lasallian charitable organization, The Centre of Love Foundation (TCOLF). TCOLF works to assist underserved communities in Nairobi by providing education and access to clean water.
During the weeklong trip, Brother Gus and six other volunteers conducted outreach at several sites near Nairobi, including an orphanage, a school for impoverished children run by the Ngong Road Children’s Foundation, and Cheshire Home, as well as a shelter operated by Catholic sisters for unhoused elderly people. The group also visited the Kibera settlement, where they attended the dedication of land for a future school.
“We went there to talk with the people, to pray with them, to engage them in conversation,” Brother Gus says. At the school, “we were engaging with the kids, playing games with them, telling stories, and reading to them.”
Brother Gus has deep roots in the African continent, having lived and worked there extensively over the course of his Brotherhood. “Africa,” he says, “is a second home for me.”
That sense of belonging was especially evident during a Maasai communal celebration, where Brother Gus; Patrice Henning, founder of TCOLF; and Brother Larry Schatz, FSC, of the Christian Brothers of the Midwest, were named honorary tribal elders.
Reflection
The people of Kenya, oh how I need you and I hope you may need me. That is at the very heart of my “yes” to serve.
It’s about mutual respect and understanding.
It’s about “together and by association” as transformative partners hoping to change each other’s lives and circumstances.
People from different parts of the world coming together to live, listen, to understand, appreciate, suffer together, to laugh, love and pray.
I know I need to learn from you, the people of Kenya, to understand your culture, traditions, and social attitudes. This experience will teach me and form me, challenge me and stretch me, and in the end, it is I who will have grown from this experience.
I will be transformed.
— Brother Augustine Nicoletti, FSC
As featured in the Fall 2025 issue of Manhattan Magazine.