I wanted to put a post together so that I didn't fill up your inboxes with an email with fifty million pictures attached. You think I'm kidding? I'm kind of kidding, lets try seven hundred photos perhaps.
So, while I was away, I got on the ol' interweb and sent a fairly emotional email back home to you folks and you were kind enough to send a total of £550 across - which is amazing, thank you. I can't tell you how much I cried when I saw the total! It helped hugely that I was there right then and there and could go and spend it and photograph it, but I have huge faith and trust in Ashleigh, who is out there right now, and Georga who lives in Ireland and manages the account you paid money in to.
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| Ashleigh is in the floral dress, Georga in the blue top |
I'll tell you a little bit about Lunahome, the house where the children live. Ashleigh and Georga were ex- i-to-i volunteers who'd never met each other before last July and they kindly invited me (or I gatecrashed, I'm not sure) out to dinner on my second night in Kenya. I loved listening to the two of them, they're like a married couple, despite Georga being married to a lovely guy called Connor...
They told me that the original project they worked at with i-to-i had some horrific abuse (both physical, sexual and mental) and the owner of the home was involved in a huge amount of corruption. I won't name any names here as its an ongoing thing sadly. To cut an extremely long story short, Ashleigh and Georga could have buried their heads in the sand, but they chose to do some digging, chose to completely turn their own lives around in the hopes of helping the children at the home.
They went to the police, they went to the Children's Department, they went everywhere and came up against a whole lot of red tape, but refused to back down and fly home knowing that they had children depending on them.
Sadly, things don't run that fast in Kenya anyway, and when there's corruption involved, it takes even longer. So Ashleigh and Georga have opened a beautiful home of their own, Lunahome, and are happy to say that 15 children have now been taken off the streets and are in their care. Amazing.
No money from the government goes towards the home, it exists purely from donations, so the money you sent is amazing. Thank you again.
It's fair to say this place has stolen quite a large part of my heart and I can't wait to go back and see everyone again. Here are some photos of where your money went. Enjoy:
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| Ashleigh and I went shopping! |
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| We ordered quality wooden furniture |
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| We painted aforementioned wooden furniture! |
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| And made a mess... |
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| More toys! |
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| More furniture! |
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| Your cash in Kenyan Shillings! It made it over safely :) I could go on for a lot longer but I'll leave it there for now. You've made 15 children very happy and of course it doesn't have to end there! You can make a donation of any amount whenever you can via this link http://www.mycharity.ie/donate_charityIndex.php?charityID=628 Asante sana and kwaheri (thank you and goodbye) Katie x x |
