Nakuru Safehouse for Kenya Women and Children

Hello Everyone,

One of the heartbreaking realities of life in Kenya is the extreme poverty. Six-year-old Joab and nine-year-old Lavix’s HIV positive mother was put in jail when she was reported to the police for child neglect. She was forced to leave Job, Lavix and their one-year-old brother Raj inside their 12x12, one room home while she went out looking for odd jobs such as washing and cleaning to feed her family. The one-year-old was allowed to stay in prison with his mother sleeping on a thin dirty mattress in a room with 20 plus women and their babies; however, the older children were placed in a place known as Juvenile Remand. This is a horrible place for young innocent children as they are placed in a dormitory with older children who are there awaiting trial for crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery with violence. Alleged criminals up to 18 years of age are sharing the same dormitories with innocent children such as Job and Lavix at remand. I have been told that some of these alleged criminals are actually up to 21 years old and simply lie about their age to stay in juvenile remand as opposed to jail. I learned about remand several years ago when I went down to Children’s Services to pick up the magistrate's commitment orders for two children that had been placed in my care and (of course) came home with two sets of orders and these two gorgeous children, Job and Lavix. Who could say no after hearing that they had been in remand for over three months?  These children had no idea why they were suddenly placed there or where their mother and baby brother had been taken.

The first thing I did was arrange for a visit to their mother and baby brother in prison. I then arranged to have Mama Lavix released into our care on parole and enrolled in a program training HIV-positive women to sew beautiful bags for sale to tourists.

Mama Lavix and the three children lived with us for a month while she was on probation and training at her new job. I loved seeing the joy and happiness the two older children experienced at being reunited as a family again. The bitter, sweet day came when Mama Lavix passed her unpaid one month training period and was hired on as a full-time paid employee. For the first time in her life, she was receiving a regular, reliable income. I say bitter, sweet only because it was time to say goodbye to two great kids who had been part of our family for several months, and Mama Lavix and baby Raj who had lived with us for just over a month. We assisted her with the first month’s rent on her new home, mattresses, blankets and a few necessities to get her set up.

That was over five years ago. I recently heard that Mama Lavix is still working at the same organization sewing bags for tourists. However, and this is the other great part of her success story, she has also opened a hair braiding salon which employs three vulnerable young women who would have found themselves in a similar situation if it wasn't for Mama Lavix's help.

If it wasn’t for your support back then I simply cannot imagine what the fate of this family would have been.

We didn’t place in the top 4 in GlobalGiving’s Little by Little campaign last week, missing out on  $3,000 in bonus money. But we are delighted with the response we did get. Your donations made a lasting difference for our children in Kenya AND created a race to the top!

Because our project did so well, the other projects in contention had to ramp up their efforts to get ahead of us - meaning your support for girls in Kenya inspired others to empower more girls in the Dominican Republic, educate more girls in Cambodia, sponsor STEM camp for more girls in Nigeria, and help more girls in Vietnam get to school. We're so proud to have been a part of this competition where girls around the world came out as the clear winners.

Thank you so much to every one of you who made this campaign such a success! 

I appreciate your readership, please pass on our newsletter to family and friends, it is a way of helping us help more children in Kenya.

Warmly,

Jennifer Hughes-Bystrom

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