Our Courageous Kids discovered Hekima Place over a year ago, while Elizabeth was vetting future partners for Our Courageous Kids. Already, there were two very special centers that Our Courageous Kids knew we wanted to support in Kenya and Honduras but the work needed to expand.
When Elizabeth first drove up to Hekima in April of 2016 to make a personal visit to this center she’d heard so much about from her conversations with its founder, Kate Fletcher, she was impressed right away.
Elizabeth doesn’t use the word “impressed” lightly.
For several years, Elizabeth and her husband traveled the world as he led a large global non-profit dedicated to ending child hunger worldwide. During that time, they both visited many children’s centers, including orphanages throughout Kenya. On these visits, they often worried about the well-being of the children they met. Caregivers didn’t seem to be trained. The children’s rooms felt unclean or dark with no light or windows. The grounds felt over grown and lacking safe places for the kids to play. Visits like this put tears in your eyes and make you feel like you want to take a couple of kids home in your suitcase (if it was only that easy!).
Children deserve better like the kids who study in this Kenyan center below.
Because here’s the fact: to run a home where children eat, sleep, study and dream about their future is serious work. You can’t engage in it without careful attention to details. Children who’ve lost one or both parents or have faced life circumstances where their relative caregivers can’t look after them properly deserve THE best.
Our Courageous Kids wanted to support THE best, places where donors could be proud to send their support knowing that the resources of the home were properly managed and children were thriving!
Hekima Place is one of those centers. It’s a home for girls where details about their daily surroundings matter. And where girls are going on to great educational achievements even as many of their parents have died because of HIV.
As Elizabeth began to meet caregivers and the girls, she could tell right away the quality of its staff, facilities, and programs.
The buildings where the girls sleep are well constructed.
The caregivers beamed with pride in their training.
The girl’s clothes and shoes are clean– not just because someone is doing everything for them– but because they are learning valuable life skills to take care of their own bodies and belongings.
Elizabeth especially loved meeting Rafiki, the center dog as she watched the girls do the their homework and play games. During lunch with several of the high school aged girls on her first visit, Elizabeth was impressed to hear them share more about their big dreams for the future. Some of the girls want to be artists. Some want to be lawyers. Some of dream of being accountants. The table felt like a place where the girls felt comfortable to be themselves and study hard afterwards.
Our Courageous Kids was glad to become a partner of Hekima Place in 2016 with a grant for the counseling program, which helps create physical and emotional space for the girls to process their grief and loss. And we look forward to how we can champion their efforts in the future.
We believe this work is critical to ending the cycle of poverty in places like Kenya, and we are proud to be a supporting partner of Hekima Place.
Thank you to our donors, for making partnerships like this so sweet. And as always, we’re glad to receive your further support through an online or in the mail donation by clicking here.