Completing the Children’s Centre in Kenya

While we have been neglecting this blog, so much promising work has happened for the Children’s Centre near Nairobi, Kenya.

In June, the generous people at Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics made Hands Up for Africa one of the beneficiaries of their successful Charity Pot program. One hundred per cent of the price of every pot of this moisturizing cream goes to several charities that support environmental, humanitarian or animal rights organizations. Their donation to HUFA was directed at completing and outfitting Christ Cares Children’s Centre – the 17-year dream of Mama Mercy, our organization’s main inspiration. Our hope is that the Centre will be ready to house up to 20 orphaned and vulnerable children in 2010.

Thanks to the bore-hole-well donation from Planet Wheeler Foundation, the drilling started in the spring of 2009; after a technical delay, we are finally in the last stage – building the water tower, bringing electricity to the site, and installing the electircal pump. Water is life, and it is coming soon….

Christmas came early for HUFA

Hands Up For Africa (HUFA) received an unimaginable Christmas gift this year, one that will make a difference to generations of Kenyans in Ongata-Rongai. Australia’s Planet Wheeler Foundation responded to HUFA’s funding pitch with a $21,000 grant to help us drill a bore-hole well at the site of a the new orphanage.

With the overwhelming amount of money raised last September at a memorial event for Avchen, HUFA was about half-way toward its immediate goal of funding the well – an essential piece of making Christ Cares Children’s Centre in rural Kenya a sustainable place around which a community can grow.

Planet Wheeler Foundation is a non-profit organization started by Lonely-Planet founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler. It supports practical and effective projects around the world which aim to alleviate poverty. Korina Miller, an old acquaintance of Avchen’s who now works for Lonely Planet in London,  brought the opportunity to us and graciously sponsored our grant application. With the incredible organization and tireless attention to detail of Mama Mercy in Kenya, we put together a pitch for the entire cost of the well – $28,000. Planet Wheeler came through with a remarkably generous donation for such a new organization – a testament to the authenticity of Mama Mercy’s vision and work.

HUFA will cover the remaining cost and still have enough to continue to sponsor our two girls from Rescue Dada Centre in Nairobi – Agnes and Juliana – as well as help keep Mama Mercy’s daily lunch program running in Rongai.

We’d like to say an enormous thank you to the Planet Wheeler Foundation for making this well possible and for honouring Avchen’s memory in such a wonderful way. Where there is water, there is life.