Local volunteers home after Kenya orphanage experience

Sinéad Broderick, who teaches in Nobber Primary School, and Kate Martyn from Dunderry returned recently after completing a period of voluntary work in Kenya with the organisation Humanitarian Volunteers which is managed and operated by past and present professional volunteer development workers. They were assigned to the Dream Project Children's Home Orphanage, near the village of Ngong, 20 minutes from the capital, Nairobi. The Dream Project was established in December 2004 by Rachel Gichia and her husband Steven to address the needs of children orphaned by the AIDS pandemic and destitute and abandoned children in the society. Children from ages three to 17 attend the home. Sinéad is originally from Loughrea in Galway. Kate is from Dunderry and has completed a degree in Irish and religion in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin. She plans to attend St Mary's University in Strawberry Hill, London, to complete a postgraduate course in teaching. Also volunteering with them was Tom Paul Sheehan from Cork. Kate says that while no training was needed in Ireland, before leaving, the two first mornings in Kenya were taken up by seminars from the University of Kenya about equality and volunteering. It was a long day for Sinéad and Kate as they taught English and maths in the mornings to the nursery children, whose native language was Swahili. In the afternoon, they taught primary school age children. Sinéad says that "these children had good enough English and were very eager to learn". "After classes, we would bring the children to a field to play football, to skip and generally just to play." Kate adds that: "From 4pm-5pm every day, we brought the kids to a field and played rugby, football and played games with them. We also taught them many songs of which included 'I'll Tell Me Ma' - they particularly loved that one!" Each evening, Kate taught the secondary children English. Sinéad also taught these children, who are aged 15-17 years, physics, maths, geography, history and chemistry. "This was a challenge but I enjoyed it as the children had a great level of English and really appreciated being taught," she said. "We brought over balloons, skipping ropes, footballs, bubbles, copies, crayons, pencils, colouring pencils, erasers and sharpeners. The children loved the balloons and bubbles as they would have never seen them. They appreciated everything. We also brought over chocolate for them to sample," she added. Before they went to Kenya, Kate and Sinéad organised some fundraising events which included a cake sale in Nobber, a raffle night in Ryan's pub in Navan and sold tickets in various towns, a collection at SuperValu in Kells and a coffee morning in Dunderry Clubhouse. Kate plans to continue fundraising for the orphanage. "The orphanage has very few facilities. They don't have proper toilets or sufficient space for the children to sleep. There are three to four children to a mattress. They are planning on extending and building adequate buildings but to do this they need as much support as possible. When we were there, we used the fundraising money to build a playground and a dining hall as the children had nowhere to sit down and eat their food."