Lift the children has worked with children orphanages in Kenya since 2009. In this period, they have witnessed many changes take place especially when it comes to how government is regulating children affairs.

When we started our work in Kenya-  orphanages were largely unregistered entities. In most cases they operated under a church, people of goodwill initiated privately owned children orphanages. It was as simple as seeing children in the neigborhood who had no place to live, collecting them, bringing them in one’s own home or a stand alone building and just like that,one could have started a children home.

That period is long gone and things have significantly changed. Today, it’s near impossible to start a children orphanage from scratch. The process of getting children into the orphanage has changed from picking children in the streets or drop-ins by wellwishers to a complicated process of getting the children from authorised government entities that deal with children issues.

There are many ways children become candidates for children orphanages- Below is a summary of some of them

1. Abandoned children- this mostly happens when parents throw away a child immediately after birth. It becomes very difficult to tress who the mother is. Once such a child is picked by good samaritans, they are handed over either to local authorities who then handover the child to the children orphanage or the Good Samaritans hand over the child directly to the Children orphanage. In the second case, the person incharge of the orphanage must report the case to the relevant children department for the abandonement case to be officially filed by the department.
2. Total or partial orphans- they can only be candidates if they completely have no existing family or relatives. In this case, the Children department would initiate the process to have the children move to an orphanage or the orphanage managers could initiate the process requesting the department of children to allow them host the affected children.
3. Abuse and Neglect- some children are victims of sexual abuse, physical and or emotional abuse either by parents, relatives or the larger community that is supposed to take care of them. This makes such children potential candidates to be taken care off in an orphanage settings.

Even though governement is discouraging poverty and lack of material endowment as a reason enough for children to be separated from families and to be raised in the orphanages, the available statistics show that the larger percentage of children living in orphanages end up there due to poverty and lack of basic needs. Such needs include availability of food, opportunity to attend school, in ability to pay rent by parents among others.

Lift the Children champions and gives priority to orphanages with the most destitute orphans and vulnerable children. Our approach of organizing a Children Registered in each orphanage helps us to track the movement of children in and out of the centres we support.

Adopting one of the orphanages that is needing support under Lift the Children gives you a gaurantee that you will be supporting the most deserving children. We strive to link you directly to the director and the children through online and other platforms available to us.

Pick one orphanage today and offer to support them either indefinetely, for a year, six months or even three months.