Change a Child's Life

25/12/2025

🎄🎄🎄 THANK YOU SO MUCH! 🎄🎄🎄
Here are some of the many Food Hampers that we have delivered this Christmas. Your donations put smilies on the faces of so many children. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 🎄🎄🎄

24/12/2025

We were able to send so much food to the Samburu Girl Child Rescue Centre that the nuns went out today to share what they had with needy families in the local community. ❤️

24/12/2025

🎄 THANK YOU UPTON HALL SCHOOL 🎄
for providing a Christmas Food Hamper for the children of Our Lady Guadalupe Children’s Home. You’ve made Christmas a happy time for these children.

24/12/2025

Children from the Samburu Girl Child Rescue Centre are delighted to receive their Christmas food hamper. None of these children are sponsored. Your donations go to make Christmas a happy time for these children and other children in need.

24/12/2025

Christmas wishes from the children of Our Lady Guadalupe Children’s Home.

20/12/2025

We are delighted to have a new sponsor for Joan. After attending their father’s funeral recently, John and Joan are now total orphans. This sponsorship couldn’t have come at a better time for Joan. We’d love to find a sponsor for John too, and make Christmas for these children just a little bit easier. Please message us if you’d like to find out more about child sponsorship.

LOOKING FOR A SPONSOR

Update 20/12/25. Joan is now sponsored. John is waiting for a sponsor. Their father, who had been sick for some time, has recently passed away, leaving the children as total orphans.

JOHN AND JOAN and brother and sister. They are in year 5 and 4 respectively (2024). They have lived with their siblings since their mother died. His father is alcohol dependent and abandoned his family some time ago. The six siblings raise themselves and their shack home, beg for food and often go hungry. They have been rescued by the nuns at Maria Immaculata School and we’d love to find them a sponsor soon. They are well behaved children, love learning and are average ability in school. (Can be sponsored separately. Please contact us to find out more about child sponsorship.)

18/12/2025

They don’t want designer clothes, expensive toys and tech. Fulfil a child’s Christmas wishes with a food parcel organised by Change a Child’s Life.

You can make a difference by donating today to Change a Child… Change a Child's Life needs your support for Christmas Food Parcels for Underprivileged children in Kenya

15/12/2025

🎄🎄Christmas wishes to all🎄🎄

You can make a difference by donating today to Change a Child's Life.

Make a child’s Christmas wishes come true with a food hamper festive season.

£5 buys an individual food hamper

£20 buys a family food hamper.

Our children all come from underprivileged backgrounds and will include orphans, children from the slums, street children, children from rural peasant farming families and children who live in children’s homes. Your gift will likely be their only gift, and will make them smile this Christmas.

You can make a difference by donating today to Change a Child… Change a Child's Life needs your support for Christmas Food Parcels for Underprivileged children in Kenya

29/11/2025

We have worked with Sr Rosaline for more than 10 years. During that time we have had many interesting conversations about her younger life growing up in the nomadic Samburu tribe. Due to the Samburu tribe’s culture of FGM and early child marriage, it is almost impossible for girls to become a nun. Once you are married, you are not then allowed to join the Sisterhood. Her story is so unique that it has been published several times.

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/evewoman/achieving-woman/article/2000201404/meet-first-nun-from-samburu-community #

https://secam.org/first-nun-in-samburu-tribe-opens-choice-for-kenyan-girls/ #:~:text=Global%20Sisters%20Report%20(GSR)%20%7C%7C,vocation%2C%20their%20response%20was%20unanimous

29/11/2025

During our recent visit to the nomadic Samburu tribe in northern Kenya, we learnt a lot about cultural tribal traditions.

1. This is their traditional dress, a khanga (fabric wrapped around themselves). It’s worn by women throughout Kenya, and also by Samburu men (wrapped like a skirt).

2. Women pierce their ears with the needles from acacia trees. They then add small pieces of wood, then bigger pieces of wood, to make the holes as big as possible. They then wear beaded earrings and other beaded jewellery.

3. They practice circumcision of teenage boys, as a right of passage, before they can become warriors. They must be warriors for 10 - 15 years before the elders allow them to marry.

4. They practice child marriage. Girls are typically married to an older man when they are around 8-10 years old. They are sold for a dowry, eg 12 cows, which is given to the girl’s family.

5. Prior to marriage, girls are beaded and used for casual s*x by the warriors. These girls are typically as young as 6-8 years old.

6. They practice FGM of girls, as a right of passage the night before they are married. No time is allowed for heeling and the girls are handed over to to their new husbands.

7. They remove the two lower front teeth with a kitchen knife prior to marriage. The children are told that if they don’t cry they can get a goat. This is because some years ago a mysterious illness passed through the tribe which prevented them from opening their mouth. The gap created from removing teeth enabled them to feed their sick family members through the gap. We suspect this mysterious illness was most likely lockjaw caused by tetanus. What they didn’t understand, was that tetanus was probably caused by their cultural cutting practices and piercings. I advised them how to sterilise their knives using boiling water prior to cutting - which they were not previously doing. Vaccination teams now travel to remote places like Samburu vaccinating children under 5 against tetanus. This has had a big impact on tribe and this mysterious illness has not struck the tribe for some years. However the cultural practice of removing teeth continues.

Child marriage and FGM is illegal in Kenya. If the police find out about it, they do act and rescue the girls. The Samburu people are good people - it’s just the culture that has to change.

28/11/2025

Have a look around inside a Samburu mud hut.
It differs from any other mud hut that I’ve been in for the following reasons.
1. The doorway is really small and low, yet the Samburu people are quite tall.
2. There’s corridors inside, rather than one or two open plan rooms.
3. They use mud and cow dung on the roofs, as well as the walls. Typically people use grass on the roof if they cannot afford iron sheets. You can only imagine what it must be like during the rainy season. Such houses can even collapse , sometimes while the family are sleeping. It takes about two weeks to build a new one, and the all the family work together to construct it. It takes time to chop down the trees and carry the wood back to the home. This “housework” is solely the job of the women in the tribe. The men and teenage boys of the tribe (known as warriors or morans) are out tending to the animals, taking their herds to water sources and places where there is food for the animals.

28/11/2025

Paul and I were pleased to be invited to Upton Hall School today to present assembly to years 11, 12 and 13. Part of our presentation was about our recent visit to the nomadic Samburu Tribe in the north of Kenya.

The tribe live in a remote area of vast plains surrounded by wild animals including elephants, zebra, baboons and lions. They built huts made from sticks, filled with leaves and packed with mud mixed with cow dung. They make fences and to keep wild animals out and if large animals come by they have bottles that rattle to alert the family. Electric fencing would be best for this job, but since they don’t have electric, they make do with what they have.

Inside their homes they cook using sticks and stones. They sleep on a bed made from sticks, packed with leaves, then covered with a cow skin and then their blankets. Their traditional diet is meat, milk and blood from their herds of animals.