1. Why an orphanage in Stella?

1. Why an orphanage in Stella?

 Unfortunately, there are not enough orphanages to accommodate the increasing number of orphans in the Nyanza region. Happy Home was created to alleviate some of the region’s need and provides a home for orphans whose extended families are unwilling or unable to care for them after their parents’ deaths.

 Most of the time, when a child is orphaned, the extended family steps in to care for the child. Often when you ask a parent how many children they care for they will answer, “Five children of my own and four of my brother’s. And I also take care of my parents.” In cases of extreme poverty, when the cost of living already far outweighs the means of the family, taking care of another child is not always possible.

   

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 HIV/AIDS in the province of Nyanza

Stella – a little village with a population of only a few hundred – is situated in southwestern Kenya, nestled between Lake Victoria and the Masai Mara reserve. It is lies within the Nyanza province – a region heavily affected by poverty and disease.

The Nyanza region is home to so many orphans due to the area’s high incidence and resulting high mortality rate of HIV/AIDS. In this region, a lack of education and continuing tradition contribute to the spread of this disease. It is customary for an AIDS widow (often infected herself) to marry her late husband’s brother. In many cases the woman infects her new husband and their future children, thus giving birth to a new generation of the virus.

Here are a few statistics concerning the Nyanza province taken from the 2006 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report on human development:

· 44 years: The region’s life expectancy – the lowest in all of Kenya
· 13%: The percentage of people infected with HIV/AIDS in the region – the highest in Kenya
· 63%: The percentage of the region’s population living under the poverty line – the highest in Kenya

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An Orphanage: The Most Urgent Need!

 

We participated in a survey of the rural needs of the region’s population. The survey asked local women what kind of support and services they needed. We expected to hear the usual answers: micro-finances, agricultural development, NGOs, etc. Instead we were told that what was most urgently needed was an orphanage.

 

 

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The Birth of Happy Home

Fifteen years ago the Mdeizi Sagwa family founded the “Medicare Maternity & Nursing Home Hospital,” a clinic offering medical care to local villages. As the medical services increased in the nearby town of Migori, the hospital slowly became financially inviable and was forced to close in late 2005.

Wanting to still serve the local communities, Alfred Mdeizi Sagwa decided to convert the former clinic into an orphanage and, with the arrival and help of Isabelle Vandeplas in 2006, Happy Home began to take shape.

“In March 2006 I came to Stella to work as an agronomic researcher,” Isabelle says. “It was during this time that I met Alfred, Rose and the whole family.

In Benin, where I worked for the United Nations World Food Program, I was involved in a food-support program for orphans. It was really amazing and touching to see Benin’s local families devoted to raising orphans, often on only one salary.

Seeing what these modest families could accomplish, I promised to myself that I too would do what I could to help orphans one day and, less than six months later, my wish came true. Thanks to Rose, Alfred’s wife, who had the same dream as me, and Tom, a friend of the family, the idea of Happy Home came to be.”

This is how Alfred Mdeizi Sagwa and his wife Rose Kavulani Sagwa (known as "Mam'dogo"), a neighbor Tom Jeseremi, Isabelle Vandeplas and her husband Georges-Edouard Lelievre-Douyon together founded Happy Home. While they were very busy organizing the legal issues with the Kenyan government and transforming the clinic into a home, a team of enthusiastic people in Belgium (Christian Vandeplas, Hilde Keunen and Roel Merckx) started fund-raising.

In November 2006, all ingredients were there to welcome the first children.

      Isabelle - Rose - Tom - Edouard - Alfred

2. The Children

2. The Happy Home Children

Who Are Our Children?

Happy Home’s mission is to support the most underprivileged children in and around Stella. This means the Home not only cares for orphans but also children “in danger,” as determined by local social services.

Happy Home provides a safe, caring and happy home for its children in need, as well as regular meals and ongoing, varied education. The Home’s aim is to give these children a chance to become healthy, happy, well-adjusted people who will one day fully reintegrate back into their respective communities.

The Happy Home team recognizes that the orphanage is not always the only option and therefore works continuously with the local authorities and community members to find solutions that enable endangered and orphaned children to stay in their own families and communities. The team also sees to it that siblings and children with familial ties are not separated and instead stay and grow together.

Happy Home gives priority to the most urgent cases without any ethnic, linguistic or religious discrimination whatsoever.

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Housing and Dressing our Kids

A member of the Happy Home team takes inventory of clothes donations and appropriately distributes the clothes to each child based on each child’s need. Every Happy Home child has his or her own closet and is in charge of his own “wardrobe.”

Boys and girls sleep in different dormitories and the elder kids help the younger ones, as a big group of brothers and sisters

 

4. Education

Educating our children

Happy Home aims to provide each child with an education through curriculum-based school classes and educates the children from nursery through primary school. Thereafter, depending on each child’s abilities and aptitudes, they continue on to a community secondary school or pursue professional training. To increase the children’s chances of success, Happy Home brings in tutors after school to supervise and help with homework.

The Kenyan school system is based on the British system. Pre-nursery begins at the age of two and nursery at the age of four or five. Children begin primary school at seven years, and follow Standard 1 to 8.

The national exam at the end of primary school determines admission to secondary school. The best students have access to the national institutes – Happy Home’s children are no exception – with the other achievers going to provincial, district and village-level school.

Secondary school is comprised of four years, from Form 1 to 4 and, again, ends with a national exam, which determines possible admission to colleges and universities. résultats à cet examen.

The Kenyan government believes that all Kenyan children should have equal access to education and encourages families to send their children to school by keeping school fees low until the end of primary. Unfortunately school fees sky rocket for secondary school, which inevitably limits access.

Through donations and fundraising, Happy Home puts money in trust to ensure that its many bright children will have the opportunity to pursue their education after primary if they so desire.

Free Time and Chores

The Happy Home team aims to create a healthy, supportive environment for its children, while being respectful of local traditions and customs. One of the challenges at Happy Home is to balance having fun (something the kids at Happy Home do well!) with learning and implementing traditional cultural practices.

We try to:

· Create a tolerant familial environment that respects local customs and habits
· Organize, distribute and execute domestic tasks
· Develop and foster the technical abilities required in a rural environment (agriculture, raising cattle, manual labor, etc.)
· Provide an environment that nurtures not only the physical but also the emotional and psychological
· Educate and integrate measures in support of great health and hygiene

 

5. The Home

The Home

We transformed the original hospital building into an orphanage replete with appropriate and functional living and working areas. Happy Home abides by Kenyan authority standards, which dictate that girls and boys live and study in separate areas.

Selon les normes communiquées par les autorités Kenyanes, les garçons et les filles doivent loger dans des bâtiments séparés. Les salles d’études doivent également être séparées.

Happy Home’s Capacity

Happy Home welcomed its first twelve children on November 1, 2006. Everything went smoothly and successfully and the Home increased its number of resident children from twelve to twenty-two then to twenty-five. In 2007 the number of children stagnated due to a lack of space. Happy Home underwent renovations and, once completed, was able to increase its residency to thirty-two children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Happy Home above all strives to create a non-institutional, truly familial environment and a true sense of home for its children and it is for this reason that new kids are taken on gradually and with great consideration, sensitivity and care. Happy Home can only survive as a permanent, stable home for its kids if it can guarantee long-term sustainability. This is where we need your help.

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6. Our Vision and Mission

Our vision

We at Happy Home want to realize the full potential of our children. We want to ensure that they will be able to reintegrate their community as healthy, happy, responsible and independent adults.

Our mission

Happy Home’s mission is to cooperate and collaborate with local authorities and members of the community to offer a chance at life and a new start to orphans and other endangered children. We aim to give them a first-class education, access to necessary health services and, above all, the opportunity to grow up healthy and happy in a safe, caring, warm and familial environment.

7. The Organisation

The Organisation

Management structure

The below chart shows our management model:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All persons involved in Happy Home’s management and fundraising are unpaid volunteers.

Only the director and Home staff receives a wage along with an external accountant to manage the Home’s funds.

The Staff

The Happy Home staff is divided into two categories, which we can define as professionals and subordinates. While the “professionals” are recruited from a broad spectrum, the subordinates are members of the local community.

Below are the primary professional and subordinate posts required for all registered Kenyan orphanages:

A) Professionals:

• Manager
• Nurse (who also takes care of the stock) + backup nurse
• Social worker

B) Suborinates:

• 4 "aunties" who work in day-night shifts
• night watchman + backup
   

À Happy Home, nous tentons de recréer un cadre familial et c’est pourquoi il y a plusieurs  «mamans ». Il nous semble important que ces « mamans » soient proches des enfants.

It’s important to Happy Home to foster a familial environment and so the Home has several “mamas” who have close, mothering relationships with all the children. The members of Happy Home’s staff are flexible and many perform multiple tasks. This way, during absences and holidays, the Home runs smoothly and the children never go without.

On top of the full-time staff, Happy Home often has visitors. There are external professionals that visit regularly, according to the Home’s needs such as academic tutors, child psychologists, etc., and the children’s families (often grandparents) are always welcome. In addition, we also have volunteers

There’s never a dull moment at Happy Home!

Board Members

Happy Home: Legally

Happy Home Kenya is classified as a “Self Help Group,” is registered with the Kenyan government and has two certificates of operation. One of these certificates expires and is renewable on the condition that the Home passes a thorough yearly inspection.

Kenya has a very rigid legal system concerning child protection, which helps ensure that Kenyan children are properly placed according to need and are adequately attended to and cared for. Three overseas not-for-profit organizations are registered and approved to make financial transfers to our Happy Home:

• In Belgium : the organisation « A.M.I.E. » hosts our project ;
• In Canada : « ÉSÉE-MONDE » hosts our project ;
• In the United-States: « African Children Haven » takes care of fundraising and transfers.

We are in the process of establishing Happy Home as an NGO so that it may enjoy the protection and advantages that Kenya awards to organizations that fall under that title.

 

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8. Financing and donations

Financing

- Happy Home’s Project Cost
- Self-Sufficiency: Our Aim
- Sponsorship
- Single Donations
- Corporate Donations

Happy Home Project Costs

Absolutely every penny donated to Happy Home goes entirely to the Home’s account in Kenya. The volunteers cover all of their own costs (food, lodging, etc.).

The cost of placing, feeding, dressing and educating one child in Happy Home is as little as 30€ a month (only 45$). Yes, you can make a big difference for only 1 Euro a day (1$50).

with the peace of mind that every Euro or dollar will go directly to a child in Happy Home!

 

These days the orphanage requires 2200€ (2700$) a month to provide a good home for thirty-two children and to provide the Home’s workers with a wage.

With the management structure and model in place now, each new sponsorship or monthly donation of 30€ allows us to welcome one more child in need.

Self-Sufficiency: Our Aim

Happy Home aims to be as independent as possible, especially when it comes to food.
Your donations

will allow us to implement the following initiatives, which in turn will help us realize our self-sufficiency goal:

• A field for maize – a staple food and a necessary ingredient in the preparation of traditional “Ugali”
• A chicken coop to raise chickens for eggs and, on special occasions, for meat
• A dairy cow for milk and yogurt
• Other ideas are in the works…

Once in place, these initiatives will markedly reduce the Home’s direct cost per child.

Sponsors

Happy Home seeks stability through increased sponsorship and fixed monthly donations, instead of counting on occasional and sporadic gifts.

The sponsors – the godfathers and godmothers – are the pillars of our project and enable us to provide a stable home.

Devenez Parrain ou Marraine       Donor form

Casual Donations

Money received from single donations is invested in directly into the Home to improve its infrastructure, namely

• renovations,
• construction and access to water.
• innovations to improve the Home’s self-sufficiency (see above)
• sport, leisure, educational activities.

It is important for a secondary studies school trust to be established now so that in the future Happy Home’s bright children will have the same opportunities and accesses as the rest of the country’s children after primary school.

Become donor: Contact & donations

Corporate donations

Happy Home welcomes donations from all companies and corporations big and small. We are well established to accept your financial help and are happy to provide all the necessary information (tax and otherwise) you or your company may need to donate.

Our project is well organized and is directed by a diligent teach of unpaid volunteers.

Consult our project structure here and click here to find a liaison office near you.

 

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