How it all started
Hope and Kindness Ministry was born out of the experience of living and working in a rural community in Western Kenya.
In July 2002 Terry and Judi Mott and their 2 children, Tom and Ellie, left their home in Church Road, Astwood Bank, England and spent 12 months living in Kosele, a small village in an extremely poor part of rural Western Kenya. In that year they started a children's home and school. Nearly nine years on, the children's home and school in Kosele are thriving. Unfortunately the frequent droughts, HIV, unsafe drinking water and a lack of affordable treatment for diseases like malaria, TB and typhoid continue to make Kosele a very tough place to live. Terry and Judi are still committed to the work they began in 2002. They have established Hope and Kindness as a registered charity to support their work
Terry continues the story .....
"Deciding to go to Kenya was a simple heart response to a series of meetings we had from 2001 to 2002 with a remarkable woman called Pat Botwright. In 1993, when she was in her mid 50s, Pat sold her home in England so that she could work with street children in Kenya . She set up an orphanage in Kisumu, Western Kenya , which is now home to 150+ children. We first met her during one of her fund raising tours in England in 2000.
As she listened to Pat Judi was immediately struck by the passion that Pat clearly had for her work. When Pat spoke about the dreadful circumstances from which she had rescued street children in Kisumu, Judi was reminded of the way her heart had gone out to the victims of famine in Africa that she had seen on numerous appeals and documentaries when she was a teenager in the 1980s. As soon as she heard Pat speak Judi knew that she too wanted to do something to help – to make a difference in the lives of the children that Pat had spoken about.
Judi's initial instinct had been to consider spending a school summer holiday as a family working as volunteers with Pat in Kisumu. During subsequent meetings with Pat, Judi and I reconsidered the scope and scale of the original idea and quickly came to the conclusion that a summer holiday wouldn't be long enough. We started to hatch the plan of an extended stay. Working through the financial details of working as volunteers in Kisumu we believed that we would be able to raise £600 per month to support our living in Kenya for a year. Our children, Tom and Ellie, were young enough to take the year out of school, and we were confident in our ability to support their education.
We started fund raising in earnest and pledges of support started to come in. In October 2001 Pat told us that she had been offered a small compound of 7 houses in a small village, 2 hours south of Kisumu in a semi-arid rural area near to Lake Victoria . She asked if we would be interested in setting up a new orphanage for her there. Bowled over by the news we could not believe the opportunity that had opened up for us. So we went.
We returned to England in July 2003 and since then we have taken on full responsibility for funding and supporting the orphanage and school in Kosele.
We became a registered charity in the UK in April 2005.
Why Hope and Kindness?
Inspiration for the name of our organisation came from a remark made by Joel Edwards, (then Head of the Evangelical Alliance) at a Christian Holiday retreat in Wales in August 2003. Shortly after returning to England Terry and Judi spent time with friends at Cefn-Lea holiday park in Wales. Joel was the key speaker for the week and in one of his lectures spoke of Christians impacting their community by acts of “indiscriminate kindness”. The phrase captured the heart of what we felt we wanted to achieve through the work in Kosele. By showing indiscriminate kindness we can lead people into God’s kingdom and bring hope to damaged lives and communities. Hope and Kindness Ministry was born that week in Wales. Its outworking continues in Kosele today.
It now costs £3500 per month to run the orphanage and school in Kosele. This covers the cost of:
Residential care for 36 orphaned children
aged 5-17
Breakfast and cooked lunch for 140 children on schooldays and during school holidays
Teaching and Care Staff salaries
Medical care for the children as required
Assistance to members of the comunity
Running costs for our aging Landrover |
