This story really began in 1989, when Suzy and her husband Herb, first visited Kenya, and traveled to the town of Embu to meet Sarah Wanjiku Waithaka, a child they had sponsored through a foster parenting program. Sarah was in her teens then, a very shy, studious girl. When she was a young child, she became dizzy from malaria and fell into a fire. As a result she had to have one arm amputated. They were very impressed by Sarah and overwhelmed by the family’s struggle, with 12 children (soon to be 13), living in a small hut on a tiny “shamba”(farm). They learned that since the family had no money for books, Sarah would stay after school every day to read and do her homework using the school’s books. Because of this, she was 15 years old and in the 5th grade.

hey also met with her social worker, and learned that when Sarah graduated from primary school, there were no funds for her to attend high school. They made the decision then to pay for her schooling.

This relationship continued for many years, even as Sarah graduated from high school in Embu and moved to Nairobi to attend college. In 1995, when they visited Sarah again, she was studying computers and living in a tiny mud and tin hut in Mathare, one of the biggest and oldest slums in the world.

Over the next few years, Sarah began volunteering in a pre-school and began studies for a certificate in early childhood education. She graduated, received a job, and became a model teacher in a program in the heart of Mathare. She worked hard, while dreaming of starting her own program for the hundreds of children that are orphaned each day, as their parents die of AIDS.

Suzy and Herb traveled to Nairobi to help Sarah realize her dream with the help of Child Shelter International. Sarah had formed a committee of five people: herself, a social worker, a teacher trainer, a friend, and the pastor of her church. Suzy and Herb (a welcome consultant, with all his years of experience, running educational programs around the world) met daily with the committee. They discussed goals, hammered out a budget and visited the site of what is to be the new “Joy Children’s Home”. The building is very modest, with eleven tiny rooms around a small courtyard. Yet, by Kenyan standards, it is a good start. The committee was thrilled with the location, in an area outside the city, and plan to start with 20 orphans and disabled children, under the age of six. The home will have a Mother, a Social Worker, a Teacher, a Cook and the Director.

Our goal is to fund this program. This will cost around $10,000 to set up the home, and amazingly, only a little over $1000 per child, per year. Our long term goal, our dream, is to purchase a piece of land, to move the children where there will be room for them to play and grow, and for the program itself to expand and flourish. All of the funds raised this year will go toward these goals.

Amidst the unimaginable poverty of Mathare—mud streets filled with trash, hungry children, desperate mothers and the devastating AIDS epidemic, with Sarah’s hard work and the aid of Child Shelter International, the work on Joy Children’s Home has begun. Your contributions will make it a reality.