Hellen Akinyi Gora will never forget the day a frightened 16-year-old girl arrived at the small maternity dispensary in Sega, a rural town in western Kenya. The girl was in labor but had no idea what was happening to her body.

“She kept looking down at herself, panicked, and asking, ‘What is happening to me?’” Gora recounted to a captivated audience at the Vacaville Rotary Club meeting on Thursday. “She didn’t even understand she was about to give birth.”

Thankfully, the girl had found her way to the right place. Her story, though heartbreaking, is far from unique in this underserved region. But thanks to the support of the local Rotary Club and a nonprofit organization called Goal4, that small dispensary is helping rewrite these stories — offering safe, skilled maternity care and life-c

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