Friday 8 February 2013

The Mission: 7 Children's Homes, 1 Day...

Last Saturday I had the most amazing time visiting five different children's homes around Mombasa and donating items of food, clothes, toiletries and SWEETS!

There were seven children's homes in total that received donations, but we were unable to go to two of them because they were in dodgy areas, so the staff met us at the meeting spot and we distributed the donations from there.

We headed off behind our big blue truck to Nazarene School, the very first project i-to-i worked with. We had to drive the truck through the smallest gap between the houses in the community, where we saw a few people try to take some of the donations from the back of the truck, but we were on their tails and they fled.

We arrived:


We dropped the items off for Nazarene, took a look around the school, played football with the children and then sped off into the distance. We had work to do.

The next stop was around the corner at the Grandsons of Abraham project. Grandsons takes in street boys who want to live a better life and it was so amazing to meet the boys. Most have lived on the streets and they've run away from something in their lives. But the boys I met were all great, a little tough looking, but once you crack through that exterior, it was great to get to know the boys and talk to them.


After leaving Grandsons, we headed to New Hope school and children's home, but not before getting stopped by the police for reasons I'm still not sure about but that I think involved a bribe :)


We met the children, took a look around the school, I even had a go at taking a lesson of my own :)





After spending time at New Hope, we hit the (bumpy) road again and headed to Tumaini Home of Hope. The project is run by a British lady called Joan who now has Kenyan citizenship and all of the children at the home have been affected by HIV in some way. There's some great work going on at the home.



We were running out of time and we still had one project left to visit, Lunahome! So we climbed back in the cars, sped over to Lunahome and met the children :)




It was such an amazing day that just showed me how much good work is being done here, but how much more there is still to do. I'm happy to have been a small part of that and to have met everyone I did that day!

Thank you to everyone who donated money from back home, thank you.