HELP FOR KENYA

From July 2016-January 2017, I had the amazing chance to travel and volunteer in Kenya. I was able to experience a beautiful country filled with culture, tourist attractions, animals and amazing people, but, I was also able to witness and see first hand a lot of hardship and struggles that these people go through on a day to day basis. I am now planning to go back again to Kenya and want to be able to take more help along with me!

Many teenagers after finishing High School and have no idea what they want to do with their lives. Some begin College degrees that lead to nowhere, some travel and take a gap year, some work to earn money to study, some do apprenticeships and some begin to work full time job. I was one of these teenagers that had no idea I what I wanted and still don’t if I’m honest. I began working a dead end job to pass the time until I could work it out, however the answer still never came. I realised I couldn’t survive working for no reason and had always wanted to travel. I decided to put my passion for making a change and my passion for traveling together and looked into volunteering overseas. I found a company, a destination and something I was interested in and BAM as easy as that, I jetted off to Kenya. I will admit I was not very organised and maybe as mentally prepared as I should have been. I knew that volunteering would be hard at times, but I never thought I would become so emotionally attached to Kenya and the people I had the opportunity to meet and help along the way. Now, from the other side of the world, I still feel a need to continue helping the wonderful people I had the pleasure of meeting.

Throughout my time in Kenya I was able to visit a variety of community projects in the area surrounding our volunteer house. I volunteered at Gladways Mercy Centre School, Friends of Orphans With Hope Orphanage, Talia’s Women Refugee Centre, St Dorcas School, Dadas School, and a few other projects for a couple of days during my time.

During my trip I saw the hardships and struggles that were going on and decided to reach out for help from the people back home. I made a ‘Give A Little’ page to help out the kids at Gladways Mercy Centre School, the place where I spent the majority of my 6 months. This page managed to raise $1,535 NZD and helped immensely! The funds raised contributed towards both essential items for the children, and little bit of fun stuff on the side. The money went towards the essentials of pens, pencils, mathematics sets, Maths and English writing books, rulers, erasers, reading books, buying breakfast and lunch for all students for a month, rent for the school building and rent for the principals home where 18 of the orphans stay. The rest of the money went towards a few little surprises for the children on Christmas which included a Christmas party for the whole school with face paint, a special meal, decorations, a football, hula hoops, bubbles, a few small soft balls, paint, loom bands, cards and chalk. I cannot even begin to explain the look of pure joy on their faces when the received all of the little items and the happiness when enjoying the Christmas party. Such little things to us, meant so much to those kids. I count not even count the amount of thank you’s and cuddles I was blessed with.

I am now planning to do a few more little things to raise money for the projects in Kenya. I really want to raise as much money as possible this time around and be able to personally distribute the funds where I, and the donors think it is needed most. I am reaching out to anyone that can either help out with fundraising or can give a little bit of their own money towards the cause to make a difference and help out where it is truly needed the most. My other fundraising ideas excluding this page include a 10K run with my sister, which will be interesting as we both hate running! My family and I are also planning to do a few car boot sales/garage sales and I am also trying to do a few presentations to make volunteering and this cause more well known. I really want to raise a decent amount of money so I can go back, spread out the donations. I will also make sure to keep the donors up to date as to where the money is going, as I know some people are worried about giving money as they do not know where the funds are spent. I really hope that people will get behind this cause and I am trying my best to raise money while working full time so I can pay for my own trip over to Kenya. If anyone can help out in anyways please get in contact with me either on Facebook ‘Megan Gadd’ by email ‘megspegs101@gmail.com’ or on my cellphone at ‘0210349900’ Thank you for all the previous donations and to all the support from everyone! Thank you!