Community Action supporting the Children’s Garden Home

Children's Garden Home (CGH) Kenya was founded in 2001 by Moses Ndung’u, an inspirational man who, whilst living in the slums, attended a school that changed his life. Moses decided to help others in the same way that he had been helped. Moses and his wife Sylvia opened an orphanage and school in Uthiru Nairobi, called ‘Children’s Garden Home.’ CGH now accommodates 195 children in a happy, nurturing and safe home under the care of Moses and Sylvia and staff. The school within CGH educates 500 students from primary age up to college/university or employment. The students at CGH have escaped abuse or extremely dysfunctional broken homes. Many are from single parent families where problems are made worse by drink/drugs or poverty. With help and care from Moses and his team, as well as local and overseas supporters, the children grow into happy, confident, capable young adults able to live independent lives, provide for themselves and give back to their community.

‘Chat Club’ is the brainchild of Natalie Hernandez, who founded the organisation to link school pupils in the UK with disadvantaged students in schools and orphanages overseas such as the CGH. The chats help build the students’ confidence and belief in themselves, improve their English skills and raise funds to provide basics such as food, toiletries, educational tools and improvements to the home. As part of Canford’s Community Action work, we have run two projects on a Monday afternoon this academic year with Chat Club, one involving weekly conversations between Canfordians and children at the Children’s Garden Home and the second through our business enterprise group with pupils raising funds for the orphanage through various initiatives including a ball event and a Canford food cart. So far £3,790 has been sent to the Garden Home to provide school equipment and help towards the Head Teacher’s salary.  Without this contribution the students would have had to wait for books and paper and the Teacher would be forced to work for free from the goodness of his heart.

As Natalie says:

“Chat Club means a lot to the CGH students. Any connection with overseas educational links gives them great motivation to achieve their goals. In terms of funding, CGH are solely reliant on donations. The CGH team do all they can to accommodate the children that come to their gates but are currently struggling as food prices increase, there is a need for more school equipment and the cost of teachers' salaries rises. They are very excited and grateful for any support they receive.

We have received some fantastic feedback from students at CGH on their chats with Canfordians.

“These classes are always fun and educative to us and the students at Canford. We played some games like Conundrums which helps our brains to be active every moment. Chat club has also endured us on how to love, encourage and care for each other and this ends up making or creating peace amongst the students in our school.”

“I have always been shy but this Chat Club changed my mentality. It has brought many impacts to our lives and I have personally come to learn about so many things happening worldwide. I got to learn about making wise choices in any situation and I got to know about my personal values. I also got to learn about many vocabularies that I could use in my speech and writings. This club has truly showed me that everything is possible with self-belief and confidence.”

The letter below illustrates just how much difference support has made to the children at the home:

As with all our Community Action work, the partnership has hugely benefited Canford pupils too, with them gaining a great deal from their involvement with the Chat Club project as the following feedback illustrates:

" I am deeply passionate about participating in Chat Club because it offers me the invaluable opportunity to engage with children my age who reside in Nairobi. Through these interactions, I gain profound insights into their experiences and daily lives, which enriches my understanding of the world and broadens my perspective. It's incredibly rewarding to form genuine connections with people I might never have encountered otherwise."

"Having done Chat Club for two terms, I can genuinely say that I have enjoyed my experience thus far and look forward to the sessions every week. On a skills level, Chat Club has allowed be to enhance my communication skills and empathy by conversing with people from different backgrounds. On a more personal level, I have developed many friendships and exchanged different ideas and experiences which has helped me have a more open mind by engaging with those beyond the Canford community."

"In my busy week I really value Chat Club as a step out of Canford life. I love connecting and finding similar interests with the people we talk to. I hope I can continue to build the bond with the people at Children's Garden Home and see their progression with English every week."

David Allen, Head of Community Action at Canford, commented:

"We are delighted to hear about the success of this project from both sides of the computer screen. It is clear that our pupils and the Kenyan pupils are both gaining a lot from sharing their experiences with each other and we hope that this project will continue to grow and flourish more in the future."

To find out more about the Chat Club/Children’s Garden Home project, please follow the link to the blog page https://blog.childrensgardenhome.org and the CGH website https://childrensgardenhome.org/

If you would like to contribute to the project, please visit the Just Giving page https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/natalie-hernandez-2