Hello everyone, While we were out in Kenya this time we had the opportunity to sponsor another child onto the programme. Thomas is 10 years old and is now in Standard 5 at Mtwapa Academy along with Safari and Kaingu. I think they had better watch out too, since Thomas will certainly soon be competing with them for the top spot in class!

Thomas is the youngest child of a family we know very well. They are extremely hardworking and intelligent, almost all of Thomas's elder brothers and sisters having attended extremely high level secondary schools. However, the family have recently fallen on hard times. Thomas's father, who was the main provider in the home, a dedicated and very intelligent man unfortunately passed away just less than two years ago. After his death, with a very large family and one disabled son to support,  Thomas's mother found it very difficult to sustain school fees for her two youngest children, Thomas and George. Both were achieving very high marks and with George just months away from his final Primary Examinations she was at a loss over what to do.

Eventually she was forced to send the children away to stay with some extended family so that George could take his final exams at a free Government primary school. These schools are often hopelessly overcrowded with more than 100 children to a classs, very poor facilities, no textbooks, desks, teaching or even writing materials. George received his marks at the end of January and I am pleased to report that, in spite of everything he managed to get exceptionally high grades and was offered a place at one of the best secondary schools in the whole country.

However, Thomas was still only in Standard 4, and with another four long years of Primary education in a poor quality government school ahead of him, the whole family was concerned that this would seriously affect his marks and performance, impacting on the level of secondary school he could attend and therefore his entire future. Thanks to many of your kind donations we were able to take on Thomas as part of the Milele group and assist his mother in his education. Now she can focus all her efforts on getting George through secondary school without needing to worry about paying for Thomas's fees too. Thomas can also look forward to a future he deserves and has worked so hard for.

He is a lovely boy with a fantastic sense of humour, he is great fun to be around. I am sure he will settle into life at Mtwapa Academy in no time at all and reach his academic potential.

Just to say a huge thank-you and congratulations to our fundraising team who have completed a huge 10 hour CPR relay! Together, we managed to raise an amazing £400!

Thanks to all the passers-by at Hinckley Carnival who doated or took part in our 'guess the name of the dummy' and 'guess the number of chest compressions' game.

Hello everyone! Welcome to our monthly updates.We really pass our thanks to everybody who has contributed towards Milele program no matter how little or small it was but we really appreciate your effort and it has helped someone and you will be blessed.

Recently we have been working with Agnes with the books at Royal Academy thus making sure they are in good use. As well to all other project which received the books have adapted the same idea. This idea has really helped the kids to know how to read at a very young age.

We also visited some of the family's of the children who received mosquito net and it was really amazing to see how the parents appreciated your donation hence you have save a future leader from malaria.

Currently we started small projects for our sponsored kids family's who are not able to take care for themselves yet.  We have chicken project and fire wood business which will help them earn a living.

Our sponsored kids plus the new ones are really doing good work in school and all this happened because of your support  we thank you for your support.

The most recent new child to be sponsored is called Saidi. He is a three year old little boy who lives with his mum, 6 month old baby brother Simon and three elder sisters Aisha, Pili and Riziki in a mud hut in Mtomondoni. Saidi's case is by far the most extreme I have ever seen. I am not exaggerating when I say that just witnessing the hell this family were forced to live on a daily basis was incredibly difficult and emotional.

She currently lives in an extremely run down one room mud shack which is in serious disrepair, but she is currently not being charged any rent by the owner of the land (a distant relative of her step mother). The lady who runs the food programme for our children at school at lunchtime helps her and gives her leftover food when she can. Without her help I suspect the family would not have been able to survive this long. Regularly they do not eat and the first time I visited them I discovered they had not been able to eat a single thing for two and a half days. When they do eat they often can only afford sima or ugali (which is flour mixed with water) and they drink only salt water. The three older girls have been admitted for free to a local school run by an English sponsor, and receive free school lunches there during term time monday to friday, however food at home is a severe problem and Saidi is severely malnourished as a result. With the mother unable to eat on a regular basis her breast milk was drying up, leaving her unable to feed her six-month old baby.

The first priority when I met this family was to get them an emergency food parcel within hours. I soon realised how desperate this family really was when I discovered that although they now had food, they had no plates to eat it off. It was like starting from scratch completely; they had absolutely nothing. Nowhere to store water, nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat from or to prepare food in, no clothes - nothing.

I was also seriously concerned about Saidi's health. Although he was almost 3 and a half years old, we fitted him for some new clothes and he needed age 12-18 months. He weighed next to nothing and had no energy at all, falling asleep every couple of hours and unable to support his own head or to sit up because of a lack of energy. I carried him everywhere because he just simply did not have the energy to walk, and his muscles were all floppy and weak. I was extremely scared, knowing that death from malnutrition is common in this area of Kenya. Before we met her, one of our sponsored children lost a sister at a similar age to Saidi due to lack of appropriate food.

We were lucky to have an expert on hand since one of the staff members on a school exchange trip taking place at the same time as our trip had been a midwife for more than 20 years. She shared my concern and was kind enough to accompany me to the supermarket to help me find the best possible way of getting as many nutrients and vitamins into Saidi as quickly as possible. She  and one of the other staff members were also kind enough to pay for the powdered toddler follow on milk we bought. This milk is designed for children from 1 year old and is rich in iron, vitamins and minerals to increase his weight and strength. That alongside an enriched diet im sure will have him running around fit and healthy in no time.

From there it was a simple matter of getting him into school. The transformation in such a short period of time was quite incredible. Within days the formula milk was beginning to show some effects and seeing him all smart in his uniform was very emotional. Even though I have only known Saidi for a couple of weeks, I already feel extemely protective towards him and can't wait to see him grow and go from strength to strength. His class teacher at school is a close friend of mine, and with her supervision and lots of love and care from our sponsorship co-ordinator Rieder, i'm certain he will come on in leaps and bounds!

We are looking for sponsors for all three of our new sponsored children, Linet, Peris and Saidi. Sponsorship costs just £75 per year and you can become a sponsor at any time. Get in touch now to start helping them along on their exciting new journey.

Thank-you