Written by Isaiah, HHFL’s IT, Communications and Admin Manager

It’s the best feeling in the world when you get an amazing donation to improve our beautiful premises for a second year in a row.

We are again very happy to receive a second round of love and support from the Swedish Community Living in Kenya, a society of Swedish nationals who are either living or working in Kenya.

This was an opportunity that was brought to our attention by Johan and Cathy Kruger, who are sponsoring some of our children.

In 2016, we received a donation from the same society and we used the funds to renovate our boys and girls hostels.

While applying for this year’s donation, we had two proposals in mind.

The proposal we chose to present was to expand our dining room that had insufficient room to accommodate all our children in one go during meal times.

This issue had been prompting us to serve them in shifts – for instance the little ones would eat first followed by the older ones. As a result, meal times would end up taking much longer time that would otherwise be used for other productive extra curricular activities.

This is usually a very competitive chance with many other organizations like ours presenting their applications, therefore it took lots of specifics to finally be considered.

We were so thrilled to be awarded the funds.

All the children were so excited during the building phase and it turns out, the space is comes in equally handy to host art and crafts, dancing and debate activities. It also comes in handy for our periodic family gatherings in the months of April, August and December with all the children, staff, donors, parents, relatives and friends.

Everyone here thinks this was the best decision we made. Kids love the big space. The art department has been working to do very nice paintings on the inside as well as painting the outside.

It is so much fun and very eye-catching to spend time inside the hall with all the captivating pieces of art the children have done. We find fun in doing our little things in our interesting little ways, and we are so grateful for all the opportunities that come our way like this one.

We bid farewell to the Kruger family in June. They have been in Kenya on a diplomatic mission for a few years and are now back in their country after completing their assignment.

We have been great friends and we will always be as long as we live.

It makes so much difference to us to make new friends like these ones, and we make a big effort to keep the friendships alive, whether physically or online.

We would not find enough words to thank Johan, Cathy and the entire Swedish community for being so kind to us.

The impact you have made and continue to make on our children is beyond words and it will last our lifetime.