Reason for Hope in Mombasa

Having introduced you all to our main project, I thought you might like to know a little about Tumaini Children’s home, as volunteers will be spending a night a week here. Tumaini (a Swahili word meaning “hope”) provides housing, schooling, medical facilities and care to children who are orphaned to HIV/AIDS, and is the first home of it’s type on Mombasa’s North Coast. The centre is home to 32 children, 24 of whom inherited the HIV virus from their parents. Children range in age from 1 month to 10 years old. The centre is run by one charismatic Joan Smith, a woman with a huge heart who has worked tirelessly for the last 12 years to improve the lives of some of Mombasa’s most vulnerable children.

Graham Corti (GVI Regional Director) with Tumaini children and Joan Smith (the home's founder)

What she and the team have created is so much more than an institution – they have created a warm and fun family home. The children are happy and lively and are receiving high quality health care, three hearty meals a day and primary school education. All this has been achieved entirely from financial donations sourced by Joan and her hard working team. Many of these children were abandoned and left to die, such as the most recent addition to the family – a one month old left by the side of the road by Mombasa’s airport earlier this week.

One of Tumaini's children in front of the readin corner in the girls' sleeping dorm

Volunteers will have a ‘sleep-over’ with the kids, helping out with homework, assisting cooks and staff at dinner time, and reading to the children before they go to bed. A staff member will accompany volunteers and participate in all roles volunteers are assigned. I hope that you will all be as touched by this experience as I was, and continue to be. It never fails to amaze me what a kind heart and a motivated spirit can achieve in a place like Mombasa, where so many children are in need of boost in life. Stay tuned for a blog on our first volunteers sleep-over experience!

- Tess Doogue, Mombasa Olives Project Leader

Reason for Hope in Mombasa