CHILDREN OFHOPE
Kenya’s Experts in Family-Based Care, Alternative Care & Child Reintegration.
Children of Hope (Tumaini Kwa Watoto- Swahili translation) is a charity that operates a family based outreach empowerment and foster care program aimed at orphans and vulnerable children, especially those living on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya. Tumaini Kwa Watoto is registered in Kenya as a company limited by guarantee with charitable objectives and a registered Charity in UK (Charity Number 1055715).
Our mandate is to relate to homeless children on the streets, reunite and reintegrate, reconcile, and restore them with their families and/or place them in a foster family. We engage in the process of restoring them and their families to reach their full potential.
At Tumaini Kwa Watoto, we believe there is a feasible solution for homeless and vulnerable children and that it may be the only justifiable solution, as the problem of homelessness is so great that building children homes cannot solve it. Furthermore, we have observed that children’s homes do not offer the level of parental love and care for children, neither do they give them the parental model they need when they become parents themselves. With this in mind, Tumaini Kwa Watoto initiated a program of setting these lonely children back in their families while addressing reasons that led them to run away in the first place.
We have:
Rescued
Children
In Primary
School
In secondary
school
Community
volunteers
Working
A step in the right direction
“It is said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step”
That step then should be in the right direction. In 1998 our Founders took such a step into the streets of Nairobi, Kenya to begin the work of rescuing children off the streets and back to their families. The first child was rescued in 1999, opening a chapter of learning, seeking a way that could ensure that every child we met on the streets would go back to their family. That small beginning gave birth to the 4Rs model of Relating, Rescue, Reunite and Reintegrate. Over the subsequent years that model was tested time and again.
It works.
WHAT WE DO
Our
Mission
To set lonely children into transformed families through building relationships, prayer, counselling, empowering, training and transforming them through the word of God.
Our
Strategy
Tumaini Kwa Watoto has a 4Rs Operations Strategy that focuses on the process of rescue and reintegration of children from the streets, rehabilitation centers and children’s homes.
Our
Story
Kenya Children of Hope was founded in UK in 1996 by Heddwyn & Lydiah Williams and started operating in Kenya in 1999 to address the plight of orphans and vulnerable children in Kenya.
The Children on the Streets of Kenya
In 1989, UNICEF estimated 100 million children were growing up on urban streets around the world. Fourteen years later the same international agency reported: The latest estimates put the numbers of these children as high as 100 million’. And more recently still: “The exact number of street children is impossible to quantify, but the figure almost certainly runs into tens of millions across the world. It is likely that the numbers are increasing as the global population grows and as urbanisation continues apace”.
The United Nations has defined the term ‘street children’ to include “any boy or girl… for whom the street in the widest sense of the word … has become his or her habitual abode and/or source of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised, or directed by responsible adults.”
Experts estimate that there are 250,000-300,000 children living and working on the streets, with more than 60,000 of them in Nairobi, who in order to survive on the streets often beg, carry luggage, or clean business premises and vehicles. Others earn some money by collecting waste paper, bottles, and metals for recycling. Girls are forced to resort to prostitution in order to get clothes or food. According to a 2004 report from The Cradle and The Undugu Society, they earn as little as 10 or 20 KSH ($0.30-0.50) for each client. Street children face endless cruelties. Their rights have been violated many times by the adults who were supposed to protect them. Often, police detain and beat them without reason.
170k
Indonesia
1-5m
Russia
22k
Romania
1.6m
USA
1.5m
China
1m
India
200k-8m
Brazil
300k
Kenya
1.5m
Philippines
135k
UK
Join More then 200
Community Volunteers
Partner with us to rescue and reintegrate children
Volunteer with us in friend-raising, sharing about our work in your location. Pray with us, subscribe to our weekly prayer bulletin, keep praying for emerging needs. Connect with TKW team in your county. Participate as a community volunteer to support families at risk.
Get in touch with us at watoto@kenyachildrenofhope.org
Meet the TKW Team
Harrison Muindi
Heddwyn Williams
Jane Wambui
John Maina
Lydiah Williams
Margaret Mwailogho
Mary Wanjiru
Stephen Muthoka
What Our Partners Say
I love the name of this charity and I love the work they do. The only hope we have is in Jesus. TKW team bring that hope to children living in desperate needs on the streets of Nairobi. Every child needs a home and a loving family, growing up as part of a community where they go to school and fulfilling their God-given potential as children.....
I have been aware of the work of TKW for many years as I was a member of the same church as Lydiah and Heddwyn Williams in the 90's. Over the following years the Williams’s moved out to Kenya to begin the work that the Lord had laid on their hearts, rescuing children from the streets of Nairobi...
