The Project

The retreat in Kakamega has been given a local name of the "Koinonia Christian Retreat Centre". Koinonia is a Greek word that means family, in a sense of wider community and love.

The aim of the project is to bring hope to the hopeless, love to the lonely, and peace to their hearts.

We care for youngsters who have nothing, and have experienced many types of rejection, abuse, abandonment and fear in their little lives. This will be through providing shelter, food, security, behavioural boundaries and individual attention.

The retreat will be overseen by Bishop Simon in Kenya and run day to day by a manager, cook, caretaker, teacher, cleaner and security personel. The retreat will be under the guidance and control of the board of directors in the UK, and Bishop Simon.

The objective of the project is to help each individual to be a productive and valuable member of the society in which they live. We do not want to only keep them alive, and give them hope, but help them to achieve a brighter future by education, training and life skills application.

In July 2005, the team invited the children into the home for the first time and when they first arrived they were typical of gang members anywhere in the world. They had a hard, stoney attitude and total mistrust of anyone in authority.

The difference that 3 days of receiving care and attention, and therefore the glimmer of hope, made, was astounding. A little effort can make a huge impact.

At present the project has many 21 boys living and being cared for residentially, with an older boy living in rented accommodation. The children are being fed daily and allowed to bathe, relax and receive fresh clothes when needed.

The children being cared for can actually play as children, something that they caould never do before.

Our plans for the near future include:

- Resourcing the Mother’s Union to feed, clothe and care for orphans in the rural areas. There are 46 parishes in the area worked in by The Kenyan Children’s Project. Each parish has an estimated 500-800 orphans who are being vaguely supported by the local communities and fed maybe once a week. When this support wavers the children head to the towns looking for food and become “Street Children”. We are starting to help prevent the problem of children living on the streets.

Our aim is to have 46 resource centers for this work and employ local people to run and manage each program. In a few months we hope to caring and feeding for up to 30,000 orphans!

- Building an educational facility based on nurture and loving values. We have found that children that we care for are treated differently in state run schools. They are special and need special care and we have planning to build a large building containing 8 classrooms, more sleeping accommodation, many Toilets and showers, offices, new kitchens and dining area with a stage for drama productions!!!.

We have recently received funding to start this building project and we are looking forward to having more children, taught by specially trained teachers to give them a hope and a future.

Whilst we grow at an amazing rate, we aim never to lose the central focus of giving each individual child a hope for the future, love instead of loneliness and peace in their hearts.

History

Stuart and Chloe Glassborow, who live in Fakenham, Norfolk, first visited Kenya in Nov 2001. They were invited to Kenya by friends in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, as part of a fresh water bore hole digging project which raised money to dig bore holes in 46 parishes in western Kenya. The town that the project was centred in is called Kakamega, and is a regional centre situated north of Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, and near to the Ugandan border.A link was forged with an Anglican Bishop, Simon Oketch, and that project was responsible for helping up to 3000 people with each bore hole.

Whilst visiting the wells, Chloe and Stuart were impacted by the plight of children who seemed to have nothing.After investigating the situation, they were informed that the children they saw were poor children but even worse than this was the situation faced by another group of youngsters, the "Chokora", the scavengers.

The Street Children, numbering between 300-500 in a town of 8-10,000, lived in the gutters and scavenged for anything they could find, but we could not see them, because they only came out in the darkness. Being touched by this but not knowing what they could do about it, the team returned to the UK.Acting on these feelings some while later, and after much questioning of Bishop Simon and friends who had worked with street children in other areas, Stuart and Chloe returned to Kenya in Jan 2004 to investigate the problem first hand and to document the issue. Collecting photo and video evidence, they spent 10days meeting with the "chokora", feeding them on the streets and establishing rapport with them. On travelling back to England, they started to look into the possibility of fund raising for the children, and purchasing a retreat that had been seen.

Fundraising started in July 2004, and by May 2005, enough money had been raised to purchase the retreat and make a further trip to Kenya to see what the site needed in respect to renovation before children could enter.

The Kenyan Children's Project became a registered charity in June 2005.

In July 2005, a team of 13 comprising of teachers,students, builders and professionals travelled to undertake the decorating and renovating of the retreat along side an army of locals. The retreat was then ready for the children.