Kibera Orphan Education Project
Hello Everyone,
We want to give you an
update and share some wonderful news with you
about the “Kibera Orphan Education Project”.
We have always hoped we could expand the
program by providing a “family environment”
where the children would not only get a good
education but also live in “family units”
within a “village” similar to the famous Boys
Town in Nebraska. This is now going to
happen with your program. Amazingly,
there is a well established “village” called “Nyumbani
Children’s Village” (Nyumbani means home in
Swahili) just 3 hours from the Kibera slum
where your orphans come from. Last year
we both visited the village and have since been
discussing with Sister Mary Owens, the
executive director of the village, the
opportunity of bringing our future orphans to
the village. The discussions have now
resulted in an agreement between us.
Within the Village 8 to 10
orphans live in individual housing units with a
“houseparent” who is always a biological
grandmother of some of those orphans.
There are currently almost 700 orphans at the
Village living in 70 homes. The Village
is designed for 100 homes. The Village is
located on 1,000 acres donated by the local
government and includes a primary school, high
school, trade school, medical clinic, guest
house, convent, community hall/church, very
large community organic garden, small farm and
several hundred acres devoted to tree farming
in the future so eventually the Village can be
self-sustaining. The Village was founded
by Father Angelo D’Agostino, an American priest
who devoted his life to the orphans of Kenya
and their destitute grandparents. Sister
Mary Owens is an Irish nun who has lived in
Kenya for 40 years and was Father Angelo’s long
time deputy. Here is another interesting
side note….Sister Mary is a Sister of Loreto
nun as are all the nuns who teach in the
schools at the Village. The Sisters of
Loreto is the same Religious Order that Blessed
Teresa of Calcutta first joined and taught
schools with in India for over 20 years before
she started her own Order.
There are some unique
benefits for your orphans in going to the
Nyumbani Children’s Village. First, their
education will be excellent. The high
school, including the children’s national test
scores, is rated as one of the best schools in
Kenya. Second, with a trade school
including carpentry and mechanics right at the
Village, those children who do not go on to
college will have an opportunity to learn
skills to provide the ability to support
themselves. Third, the children will be
living in a safe, holistic environment within
some semblance of a “family” unit. The
fourth reason is that currently,
when we put an orphan into our program and they
go away to a boarding high school more often
than not they are the oldest of their siblings.
That means we have to leave younger siblings
behind in the Kibera slum to fend for
themselves. Now, when we send an orphan
to the Nyumbani Children’s Village we will be
sending all the siblings and the destitute
grandmother. There will be no more little
children left behind. Fifth, since we
will now be sending all siblings we will have
some children in primary school as well and be
able to follow them all the way through high
school and beyond. Sixth, the
grandmother, who is aged, destitute and living
in a very unsafe environment in the Kibera slum
while trying to take care of her grandchildren
will now be safe, secure, have her own little
“home”, including a small little personal
garden, have an additional role such as weaving
baskets and have access to the medical clinic.
We are very excited about
“taking the program to this new level” as one
of our donors said so well. Here is the
most exciting news. The first
family of 6 orphans and their grandmother has
already been selected. The only step
remaining is the paperwork with the Kenya
government (they have procedures one must
follow due to concerns about child trafficking);
Nyumbani has an outstanding relationship with
the Kenyan government (Kenya’s First Lady is a
strong supporter of Nyumbani) so the paperwork
has never been an issue. These first 6
children, as well as 2 to 4 more, will be added
to your program and move to the Village during
the school break in December.
Our current children already in other
schools will remain in those schools as they
have established friendships, are all doing
well in school and are already well into their
education.
We will also be building
the little home for these new
children in the Village near the end of this
year. We are excited, as Father
Frank mentioned at Mass several weeks ago, to
have the opportunity to build this little house
for our own Blessed Teresa orphans at the same
time as we build our new church. The cost
of the home is $15,000 which includes a few
bunk beds, basic tables and chairs. We
have much of these funds committed to already
but would very much welcome more help to reach
our goal. If you have not had an
opportunity to donate or would like to donate
funds specifically to the “house” in addition
to your regular donation please donate by
writing a check to: Blessed Teresa of
Calcutta Parish and please put Kibera Orphan
House on the memo line of the check so that
it goes into the right account. You can
drop the donation in the church collection or
mail it to:
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
Parish
Kibera Orphan Education
Project
P.O. Box 1802
Woodinville, Washington
98072
Thank you so much for
supporting these children, the poorest of the
poor. We pray God blesses you
abundantly not only for your
support but more importantly for your interest
and concern in all His children.
God Bless You,
Ken & Carol Fabrizio
"Helping Children Help Themselves"
Can you
imagine living in a 10’ x 10’ shack on an old
garbage dump with only your 90-year-old
grandmother to help you through life?
There is no water and no electricity. Two
feet in front of the entrance to your shack
runs a rivulet of water that includes human
waste. If you are fortunate to eat today,
it will probably be rice cooked on a tiny
charcoal cooker. Attending school on a
regular basis is a luxury that exists only in
your dreams. You are 14 years old and
your sister is 19. This was the life for
Martha and Mary who had lost both parents and
quickly became orphans in the huge “Kibera”
slum outside Nairobi, Kenya. The last
thing that their mother told Mary, the oldest,
was “take care of Martha, go to church, get an
education, I love you”.
Today Mary has finished
secondary school (high school) and is getting
an even higher education and Martha is
excelling in high school. Amazingly,
they both have
excellent grades
even though they have led such a difficult
life, experiencing everything from the loss of
their parents to having their shack burned down
and the loss of the little they owned.
Mary and Martha were the first children our
parish was able to help get an education
through the “Kibera
Orphan Education Project”.
This program provides orphans in the Kibera
slum, in Kenya, Africa with an opportunity to
get a secondary (high school) education and
sometimes beyond that. You see, education
is the only hope for these children; the
“poorest of the poor”, as Mother Teresa would
say. It is how they can break out of the
cycle of poverty.
This
social justice program has an in-country
coordinator, Father Dennis Geng, an American
who has lived in Kenya for 12 years.
Father Dennis spends months getting to know
individual orphans before he recommends them
for the program. Once they begin school
he meets with them regularly, reviews their
grades and discusses their progress with their
principals. This intensive screening and
monitoring has resulted in all of the children
excelling in their education and consistently
ranking in the top tiers of their class as
indicated in
these grade
reports.
The schools these orphans
attend are all boarding schools (the norm in
third-world countries). They are provided
three meals a day (probably for the first time
in their lives) and a safe and nurturing
environment for their studies.
The children are grateful that
someone cares about them enough to help get an
education as indicated by this note from Susan,
one of the children in the program
Here stateside, within Blessed Teresa of
Calcutta parish, the program is managed by Ken
and Carol Fabrizio, two parishioners that felt
the Holy Spirit calling them to action and
inspiring them to personally commit to changing
the lives of these very needy children.
Like so many other Blessed Teresa parishioners,
Ken and Carol are trying to follow Blessed
Mother Teresa's own dictum to 'Do Small Things
With Great Love'. If you'd like to learn
more about the Kibera Orpan Education Project,
please contact
Ken or Carol.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Parish
Your donation will directly help a child escape the Kibera slum and help them build a future!
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