How a Yukoner’s legacy still makes a difference today
As the saying goes: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
This, and more is what Fish4Kenya (F4K) is doing. The non-profit organization was founded by the late Yukoner Susan Thompson, a fish biologist, back in 2005. Now, 21 years later, the project is still thriving. Just a few weeks ago, members of F4K organized a trivia night that raised $5,000 (exceeding their $3,000 goal), proving that a new generation of Yukoners is embracing Thompson’s vision of global justice.
When Susan travelled to Kenya to volunteer with Crossroads International, in 1984, she made many new friendships that ultimately led her to travel back and forth many times between Canada and Kenya, before she started the F4K program. That was when she met Hussein Wechuli. Thompson recognized that Kenyan farmers were attempting fish farming without proper knowledge, so she returned to Canada to develop a training program. Then she came back to Kenya to launch it with Wechuli. While Wechuli engaged farmers in Kenya, Thompson raised funds in Canada.
Don Toews (past president) and Andrea Giesbrecht (current president) explain how the program works. Giesbrecht says the program to train people and get them fishing runs for two years. In the first few days of the program it is all about theory, as participants learn about fish-farming techniques and business management. After that, F4K provides trainees with mono-sex tilapia fingerlings, to stock their ponds along with high-protein pellet feed.
When the fish are between 400 to 500 grams, they are harvested and sold. In the second year of the training period, farmers begin paying for their own fingerlings and stocking their ponds, with the manager’s help. Farmers become financially independent but continue to receive logistical and technical assistance. They also have Wechuli’s guidance, says Giesbrecht.
According to the organization’s recent press release the money raised at the recent trivia night will help 20 new farmers in 2026. In addition to the training program, F4K is establishing a pilot community-based fish hatchery. It is a $16,000 project funded through various fundraising efforts. The hatchery will serve as a training facility and be a step toward long-term sustainability.
The trainees are farmers who also grow corn and other crops to feed themselves. The farmers have very little cash, which they need to pay for things like school fees and uniforms for their children, or to pay other expenses such as putting new tin roofs on their houses, says Toews.
Toews adds, The demand and price for fresh tilapia is very high in Kenya, and buyers come to the farms during harvesting and buy most or all of the fish harvested. Farmers receive about $1 to $1.50 for each 400 to 500 grams of fish that they sell. Typically, they stock 600 fingerlings and harvest and sell about 500 fish.
“It is really encouraging that most of the eighty fish farmers trained since 2019 are still actively engaged in fish farming, with no additional financial support, only receiving logistical and technical support from the Fish4Kenya manager,” he says. “In practice, these farmers sell more than ninety percent of the farmed fish they harvest to generate this money.”
The current board includes Susan’s brother and niece and seven other supporters from Yukon and elsewhere. Most of them have visited the project and have connected with the fish farmers. Toews and Giesbrecht both agree that “Susan’s vision was not only to train and assist Kenyan fish farmers, to improve the quality of life for their families but also to connect and introduce Yukoners to the project, allowing Yukoners and other Canadians to appreciate the needs and benefits to Kenyan farming communities and the need for and satisfaction of supporting such global justice programs,” says Toews.
The trivia night proved that the strategy is working. According to organizers, it attracted young Yukoners who are motivated to engage with global justice issues. Twenty-one years after Susan shared her expertise with that first group of farmers, her vision is still alive. The ponds in Kenya are full, the trainees are thriving and a new generation of Yukoners has picked up where Susan left off, Toews adds.
