Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver

I discovered a school for orphans in Kenya, founded and directed by Hillary Mainga. He invited me to submit a short poem for one of the children to read on Saturday for their weekly Poetry Reading Project, which helps the children to learn English. These taped readings can found on Hillary Mainga’s Facebook page. All the projects and programs Hillary Mainga runs are under his Rights Awareness Projects and World Harvest Christian Centre Church.

After I learned more about the orphans, I made a donation, which was easy to do on Paypal.

Any donations can be sent through this PayPal account:  hillarymaingafoundation@yahoo.com

POETRY READING PROJECT

If you are on Facebook, you can friend Hillary Mainga and view videos of the children reading poems. And you can message him a poem of 10 lines or less to be read by one of the children the following Saturday. Here’s mine. It was fun and i hope to write others. I’m sure he would love other poets’ submissions!

The Hungry Opossum

Once upon a glorious time,
In the landfill on the edge of town,

Opossum found a wedge of lime.
He chewed on the rind, 

And what did he find? 
Old sour juice that made him a clown!

He jumped in the air and danced all around.
He grimaced and cried and spat out the rind.

He ran to the creek and drank all the water.
“Don’t be so greedy,” said his friend, Otter.

© Barbara Leonhard

The Life of Orphans in Kenya

Here is Hillary’s description of the orphans’ situation. Author, Eva Marie Dunlap, Founder of Trending Poets on Facebook, sent me this information from her blog, Author Eva Marie Cagley. I was unable to reblog it, so I copied and pasted it here with gentle edits.

KENYA SCHOOL

Hello, my name is Hillary Mainga.  I am the Founder and Director of the school.

The school has 5 Volunteer Teachers who work without pay but just driven by the urge to see these orphans get education.

Greetings to All in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I am humbled to introduce you to our school known as Rights Education Centre based in Embakasi area in Nairobi, Kenya.

This school currently has enrollment of 70 orphans and vulnerable children who  dropped out of school for lack of school fees and school requirements like school uniforms, books, pens and food.

So through some donations from individual well wishers, we try to provide for these school supplies just to keep these children in school. Because the number of these orphans and vulnerable children has increased drastically there is need for regular and reliable supplies such as books, pens, pencils school uniforms, food and other items. For this reason we kindly appeal to you to kindly step in and feel this gap by making either a one-time, monthly, or annual donation to keep these children in school. You can also send these supplies if you can.

Any donations can be sent through PayPal account:  hillarymaingafoundation@yahoo.com

Some sleep at a rented two small rooms with old mattresses and blankets, which are now torn into small pieces. We pay $50 rent every month…that is $25 per each room. We also have to prepare food for their dinner, after dinner, they move to those two old buildings for sleep.

These orphans lost their parents many years ago due to different diseases, while others are children of single mothers who abandoned them after their fathers died. So I took them on because they had dropped out school. Then I took them to school and started providing them with school uniforms books pens, other learning materials, and food.

Then we have some 20 orphans who live with their guardians. But these guardians are very poor. They don’t have jobs. They do simple manual work like washing clothes or cleaning compounds for people to get little money for upkeep. So these people also support them with free education, school uniforms, books pens, food etc. They also don’t even have good clothing and sleep on poor beddings without beds but only old blankets and mattresses.

Our country, Kenya, has high rate of unemployment, very many poor people but very few extremely rich people who acquire their wealth from corruption in government.

The government has no program for helping poor and unemployed people. No social protection policy to support needy families is in place. Here education is not free. People pay for education. So orphans, vulnerable children and those from poor family background are always disadvantaged.

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR SUPPORT! YOU CAN DONATE THROUGH PAYPAL

hillarymaingafoundation@yahoo.com

Finally, many children are needy worldwide because of social and political unrest, and wars. As you know, I helped raise money to help maimed and disabled children in Gaza get prosthetics. Even in the United States, children suffer because of homelessness and food insecurity. Because of that, I donate to our local food bank. Please reach out to help the vulnerable. When one suffers, we all suffer.