We had a very successful trip to visit the work happening in Kisumu during April.  The new addition of the rented premises for the street children means that now 124 children were fed and given some teaching at the Life Centre School.  Many of these children are from families that live in adverse poverty.  Thirty five of them are known orphans and stay at the houses that are rented.  It was a moving sight to see all of them being served basic meals sitting on the lawn outside, some were extremely young.  They really enjoyed singing and playing games with us.  You can see from this picture how short of space and resources they are inside the rented school building.

We are currently exploring possibilities regarding some local land being donated by the government where we can build a new school building.  According to the law at present all primary education is free, therefore there is a possibility that the government may assist. 

James and Alice Samo were extremely proud to show us one of the other rented premises that some of the street boys occupy- but better than this was the carpentry shop where some of these boys in training were making making beds.  we also visited a mechanics shop where others were learning how to fix bikes and a secondary school where some of the street boy are enjoying an education.

The work that has been done so far is very encouraging, we ran a small business seminar one afternoon to encourage some to start up a small business which was very well recieved.  Helping them generate a small income would make a real difference.

The school project would need to be much bigger than we first anticipated housing 125 children for Primary Education.  It would appear if we could provide a basic feeding programme and school the community would be greatly assisted.  It is James and Alice’s belief that many of the children could be housed by either relatives or even adopted by others if they had food and education catered for.  With this in mind, it is our aim to provide a School building and individual sponsors who would support the whole school project with the option of communicating with the children.  The project will be be broken down into the expense of land, building work, uniforms, school equipment as one-off projects and sponsorship of as little as £2.50 per month for the feeding and education programme.  We currently have few regular sponsors for this work, although we have now sent money for uniforms for all children attending the school.

We would like to thank everyone who has shown an interest in assiting with this project- we have currently raised £10,000 towards the school building.  Look up our fund-raising events at www.justgiving.co.uk/citizens4change/ We are planning a new trip in November 2009 to ascertain land and begin planning the new school building.