She saved a stranger’s child with $15. Decades later, she discovered why he had been searching for her.
In 1982, a Kenyan boy named Chris Mburu stood on the brink of losing everything. He was the brightest student in his rural district, studying by lamplight inside an earthen house without electricity. But his family could not afford his school fees. Without help, his education would end, along with any chance of escaping a life spent picking coffee in the fields.
Meanwhile, across the world in Sweden, an 80-year-old kindergarten teacher named Hilde Back came across a notice for a child sponsorship program. She chose a name from a list: Chris Mburu, Kenya. She began sending $15 every school term. There was no recognition, no expectation of gratitude, just a quiet decision to help a child she believed she would never meet.
That small amount changed everything.
Chris remained in school. Over time, he and Hilde exchanged letters. She asked about his teachers, his studies, and his dreams. Through her words, he realized she was not just part of an organization; she was a real person who believed in him. And he never forgot her.
Chris eventually graduated at the top of his law class at the University of Nairobi. He later earned a Fulbright scholarship to Harvard and went on to become a United Nations human rights lawyer, helping prosecute genocide and crimes against humanity around the world.
Yet one thing always weighed on his heart: he had never properly thanked the woman who made his journey possible. In truth, he barely knew who she was.
In 2001, Chris founded a scholarship program for children like himself, talented students from poor families whose potential might otherwise be lost. He asked the Swedish Ambassador in Kenya to help him locate his mysterious sponsor so he could name the foundation after her.
They found her. Hilde Back. Still alive. Still living quietly in Sweden.
Chris traveled to meet her for the first time. He expected to meet a wealthy philanthropist. Instead, he found a humble, warm woman living simply, genuinely surprised that anyone considered her actions remarkable.
Then filmmaker Jennifer Arnold began documenting their reunion. During her research, she uncovered something Hilde had never told Chris.
Hilde Back had not been born in Sweden. She was born in Nazi Germany in 1922 to a Jewish family. At sixteen, when Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws banned Jewish children from attending school, strangers helped smuggle her to Sweden. Her parents stayed behind because Sweden’s refugee policies did not allow older Jews to enter. Both were later sent to concentration camps. Her father died there. Her mother disappeared, never to be heard from again.
Hilde survived the Holocaust because strangers helped her escape. She lost her own education because of who she was.
Fifty years later, she quietly paid for the education of a child across the world, a child who would grow up to fight the same hatred that destroyed her family.
When Chris learned her story, he wept. Hilde, meanwhile, had no idea that the boy she sponsored had devoted his life to prosecuting genocide.
In 2003, Hilde traveled to Kenya for the inauguration of the Hilde Back Education Fund. The entire village welcomed her as an honorary elder. In 2012, she returned again to celebrate her 90th birthday, surrounded by hundreds of children whose futures had been transformed through her generosity.
Hilde Back passed away on January 13, 2021, at the age of 98.
Today, the Hilde Back Education Fund has supported nearly 1,000 Kenyan children in continuing their education. Many have graduated from universities around the world. Many now give back, mentoring younger students and contributing monthly donations to support the next generation.
One woman. Fifteen dollars. One child.
That child created a foundation. That foundation changed hundreds of lives. And those lives continue to change others.
Chris once said, “You cannot change the entire world. Sometimes it is enough to help one child.”
Hilde helped one child, and that single act of kindness continues to ripple across generations.
- Credit Akintoye Obisesan’s Timeline
