21/02/2026
Share your spark, shine another life
"In the 1970s, a boy named Chris Mburu was about to lose everything.
He was the top student in his school district in rural Kenya, growing up in a small village called Mitahato, in an earthen house without electricity or running water. But his family was so poor they couldn't afford even the modest fees to keep him in primary school. Without help, Chris would have grown up picking coffee.
Thousands of miles away, in Sweden, a kindergarten teacher named Hilde Back signed up for a sponsorship program for children in need. She began sending roughly $15 per term to support a child she had never met — a boy in Kenya named Chris Mburu.
That small check kept Chris in school. Back sponsored him through primary school and into secondary school, year after year, never expecting anything in return. She and Chris exchanged letters.
She asked about his teachers, his favorite subjects. He began to realize she wasn't just an institution — she was a real person who cared about him.
Chris never forgot her.
He excelled in his studies. He earned a law degree from the University of Nairobi, where he graduated top of his class. He won a Fulbright scholarship to Harvard Law School. He became an international human rights lawyer, dedicating his career to fighting genocide and crimes against humanity for the United Nations.
But something gnawed at him. He had never properly thanked the woman who made it all possible. He didn't even know who she really was.
In 2001, Chris created a scholarship foundation to help children like himself — talented kids from poor families who would otherwise never make it past primary school. He asked the Swedish Ambassador in Kenya to help him track down his mysterious benefactor so he could name the foundation in her honor.
They found her. Her name was Hilde Back.
Chris traveled to Sweden to meet her for the first time. He expected a wealthy philanthropist. Instead, he found a modest, warm, 80-year-old woman living a simple life — stunned that anyone thought she had done anything remarkable.
Then a documentary filmmaker named Jennifer Arnold entered the story, and uncovered a detail that Hilde had never shared with Chris or almost anyone.
Hilde Back was not Swedish. She was a German Jew, born in 1922. At the age of sixteen, with Jewish children banned from public schools under the N**i Nuremberg Laws, she was forced to flee to Sweden.
Her parents couldn't go with her Sweden's policy at the time did not accept older refugees. Both were sent to concentration camps. Her father died. Her mother was transferred to another camp and was never heard from again.
Hilde had survived the Holocaust because a stranger helped her escape. She had been denied an education because of who she was. And decades later, she had quietly paid for the education of a child halfway around the world a child who grew up to fight the very kind of hatred that destroyed her family.
Chris was speechless. Hilde, in turn, had no idea that the boy she sponsored had dedicated his life to combating genocide.
In 2003, Hilde traveled to Kenya for the inauguration of the Hilde Back Education Fund. She was welcomed as an honorary village elder by the entire community. In 2012, she returned to celebrate her 90th birthday surrounded by the children whose lives had been changed by the foundation that bears her name.
Today, the Hilde Back Education Fund has helped nearly 1,000 children in Kenya continue their education. Its beneficiaries have gone on to universities around the world. And they are already beginning to give back — mentoring new students and pooling monthly contributions to sponsor the next generation, through a platform they call ""A Small Act Jamii.""
Hilde Back passed away on January 13, 2021, in Västerås, Sweden. She was 98 years old.
Their story was captured in the Emmy-nominated documentary ""A Small Act,"" which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to standing ovations and immediate donations — reportedly including from Bill Gates.
Chris once said: ""You can't change the entire world. So sometimes it's just as good to help one child.""
Hilde helped one child. That child built a foundation. That foundation has helped nearly a thousand more. And those children are now helping others.
All from $15 and a stranger's kindness. "
