Our home was established to house and love the girls who need us most. And to educate them to and through college so as they can tackle the problems of poverty around them.
How it Happened:
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.
The Past
In the early 1990’s Anthony Mulongo was selected by the Kenyan government as one of the 18 brightest students in the country. He was placed in an intensive 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 had befriended a group of street boys living and eating from the rubbish dumps. They introduced him to Gift.
Gift was a six-year-old girl who lost her mother to AIDS, and whose ten-month-old brother was strapped to her back as she searched the streets for food. He was already dead but she didn’t know. Anthony moved Gift into his house, enrolled her in school, and raised her as his daughter.
Thanks to assistance from dedicated friends in Wales (later to become Cariad Kenya: www.cariadkenya.btck.co.uk), and Germany (later to become Kinderhilfe Kenia: www.kinderhilfe-kenia.de) and individuals in the U.S., Mulongo began to rescue and house another girl, then another, then another. The first home at Mudzini Kwetu was established.
The Present
Today Gift is 15 and in high school and wants to be a doctor. She is among the oldest of 32 children in Mudzini Kwetu.
The girls live together as sisters. They help run the home and they help each other.
“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, the first girl to call Mudzini Kwetu home.
OHMH, Cariad Kenya, and Kinderhilfe Kenia work in partnership to make it home to many others. Thanks to ‘Breaking Ground Ground 2009’ (our annual volunteer fundraising drive) and the Hovde Foundation our new home for 60 girls was opened in February 2011. A home unlike any around it.
The Future
Phase II is the building of a school to educate 720 of the poorest children in our region. These children and our girls will be the network of educated adults who together will tackle the root causes of the poverty that so severely blighted their childhoods.
‘Breaking Ground 2010′ raised enough funds for 24 classrooms in this school. ‘Breaking Ground 2011′ (October 17 – November 20) aims to raise the $291,000 needed for the other buildings and amenities that will make this an elite school raising justice minded leaders.
The establishment of a university fund will see that Gift can become that doctor.
