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Children's Project
The Beginning Of The Project
The new Parish was materially poor and could not manage to meet many of its needs besides their workers maintenance. Despite this, the Parish could not ignore the need of the poor in the community, particularly the children. It was found out that some of the children were orphans because their parents had dies either of Aids or other causes. The church started identifying these children and embarked on collecting food from the well-wishers and distributed to those children. Three girls in one family had left school and got married in order to avoid problems and left three young ones at home with nobody to care for them. The youngest in the nursery school would wander about in the neighboring homes looking for help, mainly food but some neighbors could not attend to her because of their poverty. The church started helping these children by giving them food for preparing meals where they lived but the food was sometimes stolen when they went to school. They also had no security. It was also detected that there were many children in school who could not get food at home. The Parish formed a committee to cater for the welfare of these children. Teachers also helped in identifying the needy children. The Parish started giving them lunch but that was the only meal for them till the next day. It was further found that these children lived in poor conditions. The Parish helped some of the neediest families in the nearby village to build some shelters or huts but the problems were beyond the Parish’s ability.
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The Dormitory
It was felt that in order to be able to cater for the needs of these children adequately there was a need for a place for them to stay and be ministered to when they are together. Some committed Christians started praying for this matter because the Parish had no funds. They believed that the place would be built by faith, hence the construction of the dormitory was started by faith. If our forefathers such as Abraham did great things by faith, we can also do things by faith. The Parish started collecting money through “harambee” (self help fundraising). Some of our Christian friends, both local and overseas donated for this work. Work started when we collected sh. 100,000.00 (about U.S. $1500.00)
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Donor Funding
The project has no main donors. The dormitory has been built by donations from local and overseas donors as stated above. The main donor in the construction of the dormitory is Rev. Edward R. Danks who was the Minster of the Noroton Prosbyterian Church, from Darien, Connecticut, U.S.A., who sold his only small house and donated the amount to Riamukurwe Parish for this project (US $30,000) and other donations from his friends. Donations for this project range between US $30,000 to Kenya Shillings five (5/=), which is equivalent to about $0.07. These donations have been used carefully and we thank God that we now have a dormitory which can accommodate about 300 children. We are thankful to God and all our donors and we confirm the Swahili saying “Haba na haba hujaza kibaba” (Small bits or pieces fill the tin).
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Dining Hall
Children used to use a small temporary shelter as their dining hall and had to squeeze themselves in. Even still, not all the children would fit and some had to eat outside. By faith, the construction of a dining hall and kitchen was completed due to contributions from the Noroton Presbyterian Church through the Outreach Foundation (PC, USA) and the Foundation’s own contributions. We thank God for all those whose hearts have been touched and have contributed generously to help meet some of the needs of these children.
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