Boston and New York Irish partner with Kenyan orphans

First ‘One Home Many Hopes’ volunteer team changed by Kenya trip

It's wonderful the works of a wheelbarrow. Daniel Grant from NYC and Thomas Keown from Boston get the posts to the fence.

At school. The biggest expense for OHMH is a quality education that will equip the girls to be leaders who can change the system that abused them.

Riziki is four and is eating chicken and french fries, a rare treat. She and her two sisters were in prison before OHMH found them.

Young girls Christine and Saumu have discovered new hope at the One Home Many Hopes orphanage in Kenya.

“I’ve been changed,” said Tim Sayegh when he arrived back in Boston after two weeks in Kenya. “I've seen girls that need love so much, yet give love without discrimination. How can girls that have experienced unfathomable struggle in their life be the same girls that express so much joy to others? It simply doesn't add up.”

Tim was one of six local men and women who used this year’s vacation to help make the vision of One Home Many Hopes a reality. The new Boston and New York-based charity provides housing and education to 32 orphaned and abandoned street children in Mtwapa, and is led by County Down and Somerville man Thomas Keown and a slew of volunteers in both cities.

“What makes us different is that, yes, we are an orphanage, but we are looking two decades down the road,” said Keown. “These are 32 young girls today but in 15 years they will be the lawyers and doctors and teachers and journalists who will sit around a table planning how they will build the schools and dig the wells and build the toilets that will stop other children having to endure the horrors they had to. We can build orphanages forever, but what need to do is raise up leaders so that we don’t have to.”

This was the first group to head from the U.S. 18 months after OHMH was formed. They built fences to separate the cows and turkeys from the fruit and vegetables, finished work on a pond that will soon be a tilapia farm, and brought some order to the office and bookkeeping. But according to Keown, there is much more to be done.

“It was the perfect first group to take out there,” he said. “Skills are great but what we need most is passion and these folks had that. It was miraculous to see the physical and emotional healing in our girls' lives since we started at the end of 2007, but also overwhelming. Overwhelming because we have planted hope in the hearts and heads of these children and now we have to deliver on that. We need help.”

Future trips are planned for August and then in autumn and winter. One Home Many Hopes invites you to be a part of this ongoing effort.

"Before this trip, I thought I knew what sacrifice meant. I was the one spending my money, using my vacation time to travel overseas, and throwing fundraisers,” finished Tim. “But [Kenyan founder] Anthony [Mulongo]taught me the value of following the whisper in your head when faced with a decision. He has made life-altering decisions with his head and his heart, and has never looked back. Not once. He reminded me that nothing in life is more important than directly investing in one."

For more visit www.onehomemanyhopes.org, email thomaskeown@onehomemanyhopes.org or call Thomas at 617-230-2574.