Sunday, August 22, 2010

Mercy Home gets some creative geekness

Jehovah Nissi Mercy Childrens Centre, lovingly known as "Mercy Home" was AVIF's first project back in 2006. It was found by volunteers and has been visited every year since then and the results are phenomenal. Building work, increase in farming land, results of girls entering university, grade scores .. all fairly amazing when you consider these girls have either lost their parents or suffered from various forms of abuse.
Thanks to very generous donors from all over the world, especially Vicki and Della from the US, the home is now catering for many more girls who otherwise would have no chance of success in life. The girls are inspirational and pretty much run the place, under the guidance of Mama and Papa; Deborah & Edward.

The girls wake at 6 every morning for prayers then go to fill huge barrels full of water and carry them back on their heads before preparing a small breakfast and getting ready for school. Some of them do not arrive back home until 6/7pm. Their dedication and resolve is energizing and they will continue to host friends and donors and volunteers for many years to come I hope.
The latest donation comes from a very generous and active BEMSEE-racer and will arrive in Kenya thanks to free-of-charge airfreight offered (again) by Kenya Airways, Heathrow to Nairobi.

Packed into 2 flightcases will be an incredibly unique internet teaching station combining hardware and  software to promote IT learning and designed to include standard IT curricula as well as investigating and comparing the uses of ICT inside and outside school. The girls of Mercy Home will be trained in the software enough to also offer classes themselves to others in the community. Viral learning!!
This amazing design was the brainchild of "Wal" and I'd personally like to thank him for his generosity (again) and creative geekness ;-) We hope that he can travel over to Kenya with his wife in the next few months to help set up and train a few of the girls himself.