The Sanata Charitable Trust News Feed

Friends Tribute to Becky

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:13:58 +0000

Friends Tribute to Becky

Jessica Adams, a close friend of Becky Schaffer, and one of the fundraising leaders, has written about her experiences with Becky and how she came to visit the Sanata Trust.

"Canadian Field Studies in Africa (CFSIA) is a McGill-run program that provides students from McGill, Queen’s, and University of British Columbia the opportunity to travel to various parts of East Africa over a 2 ½ month period as part of a field study semester. In winter of 2010, a new group of 38 fortunate students embarked on this adventure, one of whom was Becky Schaffer. This bright young woman lived life to its fullest and made no exception of this field semester. Her fondness of East Africa and its people became so profound that she decided to extend her stay and travel independently once the program ended. Her travels brought her to Gilgil, Kenya where she volunteered for 2 months at the Sanchat Restart Centre.

Becky’s love for life and helping people was an inspiration to all of us. She was clearly bound for great things, which is why her untimely death came as a true shock to all members of the CFSIA 2010 team. Our group pulled together to make a donation in Becky’s name to the Restart Centre, an organisation she held so dearly. In her death Becky continues to give, she brought us all together, reminding us of the fragility of life, the importance of seizing every moment, and how much our experiences in East Africa meant to each of us."

Together the friends have raised over $2,500 and we cannot thank them enough. The money will go towards helping the children of Gilgil, a cause that was close to Becky's heart.

Becky Schaffer Night

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:11:13 +0000

Becky Schaffer Night

In August 2011 we were all terribly saddened by the untimely death of Becky Schaffer. She had visited Restart in 2010 and became a great supporter.

Her family and friends celebrated her life with a special evening at her local hockey teams rink where she used to play. The evening was very moving by all accounts with a full house to remember and honour Becky. The Coaches and players spoke beautifully and Janice (Becky’s mum) gave a heartfelt account of Becky’s involvement with Sanchat followed by Bill (Becky’s dad) reading a letter from one of Becky’s friends, a young man who had played hockey in Yarmouth side-by-side with Becky.

In total, an amazing sum of $1,666 was raised for Sanchat. Our thanks go to Jane Gallagher for organising the event.

Please click here to read an article Becky wrote for our website asking for support for Sanchat.

New Girls Restart Centre

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:21:29 +0000

New Girls Restart Centre

Here come the girls! For years we have been striving to provide the same Restart opportunities to girls as we provide for boys. As ever the obstacles have been many but here Mary Coulson writes about progress at last.

"We now have 50 boys in the Restart and think this will be the ceiling for the time being for my conscience tells me, we have to start a small pilot scheme for little girls. There are three little girls at the moment in particular, aged one and a half, two and a half and 12 from the same family, who has a father but no mother. The father was malnourished to the point of death and when we rescued him and his children we discovered he had a very severe thyroid problem. He was not functioning as a normal human being and his mind was delusional and hallucinatory. We brought his three young sons to us, rescued the father, treated the father but the little girls couldn't come to us, or could they go to Saidia for they have a father! We put them into anther orphanage called the Bridge of Hope but I am very unhappy with them there and believe it will be closed down very soon. So, I have to take in these children and we will have to rent accommodation very close to the restart, one of our matrons will be with them all day and night and they will join in with food and activities etc etc. We will put a limit to 20 girls for honestly, Terry and I cannot afford more." (30th March 2010)

Girls' Restart

"I am so pleased to tell you all that we have 4 little girls who entered our doors today! They are all sisters of our boys and so we have managed to bring families back together again from the streets. It is truly wonderful and we are so grateful to everybody concerned especially our Child Welfare Officer in Naivasha.

All the children are doing really well and you know we have the girls now, they are so sweet and their ages range from 10 months to 14 years. We have tried to initially is to team up the sisters of the boys we have so that siblings can be reunited.

We have Wamboi (2 and a half years old), Njeri (3) and Jane (13) who are sisters of our 3 boys Pilot, Alija and John. They were homeless after being abandoned by their parents. Jane had been "sold" by her father for £20 to a man in Nairobi to work as a maid (!!!) This happened when she was 11 and when she came to us she was a very unhappy, disturbed little girl who was clearly suffering a great deal from her experiences there. However, since she has been at the Restart she is smiling and affectionate and really starting to become her own person again. She is attending school and she is very caring of her two younger sisters. Njeri and Wamboui are full of character and full of life and very happy to be in a loving environment, they had been shunted around from home to home by the authorities and then we requested that these little girls come to us to join their bigger brothers.

We have Marion who is 13 and a half, rescued by the authorities as being in desperate need of care and attention.

Grace is eight, she joined her two brothers Nelson (10) and Elphas (3) at the Restart Centre in April. Grace is a very smiley, sweet little girl. Sadly Nelson the elder brother was beaten half to death by his mother using a donkey whip. The authorities rescued him and found that the injuries to his legs were so bad that when he arrived at hospital the doctors thought they might have to amputate them. Luckily they didn't but he was in hospital for two months. He still has scars all over his body but now he is with us, his scars are healing and he is doing so well. His little brother Elphas was totally traumatised but he is now starting to smile, and feeling at home at the Centre. Their mother is in prison and I believe will never be allowed to have the children again. It is such a sad state of affairs.

Ann (14) is the eldest sister of our two boys GG and Simon. This is perhaps the saddest story of all in as much as their drunken father tried to poison her and her two sisters and her two sisters died. Ann spent months in hospital and then was abandoned by her parents along with her young brother Simon (4). They had nowhere to go but knew their brother GG was with us, so they walked for miles and miles to come and be with him. Ann is attending school with the other two older girls and is gradually settling in. She is so happy to be in a loving environment and with her two brothers.

This little girl was called Angel as the child welfare safe home did not know her name as she had been abandoned in Naivasha when she was 8 months old. The mother must have had great hardships in her life to give up such a beautiful baby girl, but we have her now and she seems very contented. Along with the other baby boy we have called Darcey, he too was abandoned but at birth, in the hospital. We rescued him and he will be four months on the 28th May 2010. He is very small for he was being fed milk from a cup and the baby obviously did not respond. He is starting to put on weight and is a very happy baby who rarely cries". (May 2010)

Children learn a new skill

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:17:50 +0000

Children learn a new skill

Having donated a wood lathe in June 2011, Ian Russell, President of the Rotary Club of Jandowae, Queensland, Australia, returned to Gilgil in October to give wood-turning lessons to some of the boys from the Restart Centre. After a couple of days, they were able to make a bowl, a candlestick, a cake slice and a cheese knife. These and more will be sold at the Christmas Fairs and the boys will receive a percentage of the profits.

Visiting the Restart Centre

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:16:24 +0000

Visiting the Restart Centre

Peter Nutsford; the Director of Music from Horris Hill School in Berkshire; has just returned from his visit to the ReStart Centre, Gilgil. Clothing, shoes and trainers have been donated to the children from the school and Peter went out to deliver them and to experience the good work that goes on there.

He was just there for two weeks but hopes to return next Easter. He was also there to visit Paul Stevens, a teacher at Pembroke House School in Gilgil who has been supporting the charity over the past year. Coordinating all these clothes and shoes, but also arranging trips for the children – for example, whilst Peter was visiting they took a bus load of children to Hell’s Gate and Lake Naivasha for the day. Paul also coaches football for an U14 Youth team in Gilgil and some of the boys at Restart are involved.

Horris Hill will be doing a series of events over the course of this school year to support Restart Centre, and we can’t thank them enough!

Below is a link to a short youtube video that the children helped to make.Peter said about it "The children at the Restart Centre were very keen to show supporters of the Charity a brief and unusual tour of their home in Gilgil. A particular thank you to the parents of boys at Horris Hill Prep School who have been donating clothes and shoes over the past year."

http://www.youtube.com/user/HorrisHill#p/a/u/1/eb1FTUWCYgQ