We only take children into Saidia where theree is no alternative. Wherever possible we prefer to have children brought up by an aunt or grandmother, and supported where necessary through one of our other projects - either the Granny club or Rafiki. But that still leaves us with a large (and growing) number of children for whom the home is the only option:-

David Wekesa and Silas his brother are the two boys who started the ball rolling - they had been wandering the streets of Naivasha for more than a week before they found their mother, her body cast on a heap at the local mortuary.	This is Stephen He was abandoned at a bus stop when he was just a few months old.
Kevin Maison came to Saidia with his two cousins Caroline and Mary. The three children had lost their parents to AIDS, and were living with their alcoholic grandfather, who could not provide for them.	Jill Barraka was found as a newborn infant in some bushes. She was obviously very ill and was taken straight to the hospital. She has spina bifida and also hydocephalus. Saidia is now her home, and she is improving steadily, loved by both staff and older children.

Most of our children arrived at Saidia in equally tragic circumstances: in 2009 five baby boys were taken in. Four were simply abandoned as babies - in one case a mother handed her baby to a seven year old girl outside church while she 'went for some milk', and never returned. The fifth child's mother died. His father tried desparately to cope, but committed suicide when he felt he had failed. The boys are now toddlers, loved and cared for by the older children and their carer, Rose.

Saidia Children's Home employs a social worker/manageress, a house mother, a teacher for the younger children, and a house keeper. All the children will be given a home until they are able to fend for themselves. The nursery children are taught 'in-house' before going on to attend local primary schools. (The Government schools are woefully inadequate, so we pay for the children to attend privately run schools.) After that we will have to find fees to send them to secondary school or vocational training. Hopefully this will launch them into the adult world on an equal footing with their contemporaries.

In a situation such as ours it is very easy to provide food and shelter, and think that you are doing all that is required. But kids need more than that: If they are to survive in the adult world when they leave they have to acquire the life skills that other children learn from their parents. To this end we make it a priority to involve the kids as deeply as possible in every aspect of the running of the home, from fundraising to dishwashing. We also have to provide a stable, secure and loving environment where the kids can develop self-esteem and confidence. In short, our little community functions like a family, not an institution.