New Name for the Children's Home

After a lot of discussion, mainly by email and Skype, we have decided to call the children's home "KCIS Child Support Centre".

As we grow as an organisation, we hope to be able to offer support to children who are not necessarily orphans, for example, those who used as child labour, those whose parents cannot afford a school uniform and therefore cannot attend "free" school, etc.

There are many aspect of child care that are not tackled by orphanages, and we hope to fill that gap.

Of course, none of this will come to pass unless we have benefactors, people who are willing to donate a little money. We are not asking for someone to donate thousands of dollars/pounds (although that would be nice), but if ten people each donated $10 (or £5), that's $100 (or £50) which we can put to good use.

Think about it. Talk to your friends. If between you, you can raise $100, you are helping 38 kids in Kisii and 17 orphans in Watamu (on the Coast).

Or, you can "adopt" a particular child. Take a look at our website to see who is there.

http://www.kcisupport.plus.com/ and click on Child Welfare.

[We have PayPal in the site]

Where your donations could go if you are not careful!

Recently, KCIS was contacted by a church charity mission in the USA, Precious Daughters, who explained that they received a donation to be sent to their branch in Kisii district, Kenya.

Precious Daughters asked us that, as we had an office in Kisii, could we visit their representative there and check out their credentials.

We, of course are always ready to help like-minded organisations, and my friend, Vincent went to visit Precious Daughters, in Kisii district.

It took a lot of finding. Vincent visited churches and other organisations to try and find Precisous Daughters.

Eventually, he found them, a man and wife who said that they were looking after a bunch of orphans. But when asked to produce said orphans, they could not. In fact there was not evidence of children living in their house or anywhere else.

When the schools turned out, the man rounded up a load of kids and tried to pass them off as the orphans that he was looking after.However, the kids themselves denied that they had anything to do with this couple!

Conclusion? These people had tried to dupe an organisation that was set up to help the genuinely poor. They will not be receiving any money from Precious Daughters.

But, it is people like this who make it difficult for us, who are genuine, to raise money to do what is needed.

Merging and Changing

Having set up as a separate entity to African Community Initiative Support, the new KCIS is incorporating the children's home (Mercy Gate Champion Children's Home), which will for the time being, be known as the KCIS Children's Home, although it will have a "proper" name in the future.

This decision has been made for the following reasons:

1. Only one person within ACIS was doing anything for the children's home


2. Mercy Gate, from whom the home took its name, did little or nothing for the home.

The new organisation, based in Kisii, is led by Vincent from the home and David from ACIS, and will be seeking NGO status in Kenya and charitable status in the UK, in due course.

ACIS, in its various forms within Kenya will still continue its activities, as far as we know.

As has been seen in previous posts, David and Vincent are also in business together as Kenanda-Steggall Exports, a soapstone exporting firm, which will be supporting KCIS financially, thereby lessening the reliance on donations - we hope.

As to the name of the children's home, we will be asking the children for ideas as well as the volunteers and trustees.

So, watch this space ...