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"The girls have adapted so well to their new home and treat each other with respect and dignity. The big girls help their young sisters and give them the love and care they need." --Anthony Mulongo, founder of Mudzini Kwetu Thomas Keown visited Mudzini Kwetu in August 2007 and wrote a column about his experience for the 'Metro' newspaper in Boston and New York. So powerful was the response among readers and friends that "One Home Many Hopes" was established in November 2007. |
| "I realized that if complete strangers reading a newspaper were moved by this story then those known to me might be even more eager to help It has been amazing. Fundraisers, web designers, graphic artists, lawyers, accountants and more have volunteered their time to create 'One Home Many Hopes" so that we who have much can share with those who have nothing." -- Thomas Keown, "One Home Many Hopes" The story of Mudzini Kwetu is not finished yet. The best parts are still to come and we hope you will help us write them... The Past: In the early 1990s, Anthony Mulongo was selected by the Kenyan Government as one of the 18 brightest students in Kenya. He was placed in an intensive five-year program of study in journalism. A lucrative career beckoned. But his outlook and perspective changed one day several years later while covering a story in Mombasa. He befriended a group of street children living and eating from the rubbish dumps. There he met Gift Hawa. Gift was a six-year-old girl who lost her mother to AIDS, and whose 10-month-old brother had died on her back while she carried him through the streets in search of food. Anthony moved Gift into his house, enrolled her in school and raised her as his daughter. Today Gift is 13 and among the oldest of 35 girls in Mudzini Kwetu. |
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| The Present: Mudzini Kwetu is currently home to over thirty girls, a handful of hens, three cows, a vegetable patch, a few fruit trees and a donkey named George - all living together on a single acre of land. Mudzini Kwetu is truly "One Home Many Hopes"! The girls wake up at 6 a.m. and do chores together around the home under the supervision of house mothers Saida and Grace. When new girls arrive they have often been toughened by the severity of their early years and are hostile to helping. After a few weeks the influence of the other girls usually softens these hard edges and the new girls learn to become part of the family. |
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| "We help the younger ones when they come and are bad. We help them to be good. It feels really nice to help them change. Sometimes they come and won't do anything but then they become different. Anthony is kind and treats us well, he is very good with all the girls." --Gift Hawa, the first girl to call Mudzini Kwetu home. By 7:30, the girls are in school. Mudzini Kwetu believes that education is the best way to escape cyclical poverty. The girls at Mudzini Kwetu attend classes at a private English-speaking school for up to 12 hours each day. Toys are expensive. The girls own a couple of board games, a few hula hoops, a rusty bicycle, some bricks and a soccer ball. Trips to the beach and to church are favorite off-site destinations. The girls can recite every line from the two movies they own. |
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The Future: Our vision is: • A new three-story building with each floor serving as a distinct family unit headed by a "house mother." • A university education for the girls so they will be able to support themselves and be agents for ending poverty in their town, region, country and continent. • An on-site kindergarten and school, free of the prohibitive private education fees that are common in Kenya. |
"I had traveled throughout the developing world and had seen need and poverty that shamed and angered me many times, but never was I so moved to help as when I encountered these girls and this place in 2007. The tangible sense of love touched my heart and the long-term vision made sense to my head. I knew I had to do something and, like all of us, I knew I could do something." --Thomas Keown, "One Home Many Hopes"  Anthony Mulongo, Founder and Thomas Keown, of One Home Many Hopes |
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