W.O.R.K. Update
Mary-Jane Butler gave an update at all the masses on the weekend of 25th and 26th January 2025 on how our donations have helped the Widows and Orphans of Rural Kenya - W.O.R.K.
This is a transcript of that update.
Fr Liam introduced Mary-Jane:
For the last eight years that I have been here, you have been very involved with the Widows and Orphans of Rural Kenya - W.O.R.K. This is a charity that we run in Western Kenya that I've been involved in for many, many years and this morning we're very, very blessed to have Mary-Jane with us. She is the founder and also received an MBE from from the Queen, actually, for her work and you are instrumental in that. In the last eight years we've given over £150,000 to the Widows and Orphans of Rural Kenya. So, Mary-Jane, can I invite you to come up and speak to us about what we're doing and how our charity is going in Western Kenya.
Mary-Jane had lots of information to share:
I managed to get my camera working, which is a phone these days, so we have some photos which I hope bring it a bit more alive to you but really, I've come to say "thank you." You are truly a totally remarkable parish. It's well over £150,000 this one parish has raised. These people you have helped.. most of the orphans would've died. Many of the widows would've been more desperate than they are. You have truly helped to free people from dire poverty so it is an enormous thank you.
The biggest single item you have given is this ambulance which we got last year. Many of you were involved with various fundraising. We've had it less than a year, but it has saved dozens and dozens of lives.
This picture is a child who came to our hospital. We are a simple rural hospital and the child was incredibly sick and needed a major hospital. We knew if we said to the mother "take it to the hospital," the mother who had totally nothing would take the child home and the child would die. So your ambulance moved this child to the main hospital where she stayed for some days - which W.O.R.K. also paid for, thanks to you. The child is now home and very okay.
The biggest difference that the ambulance is making is to maternity care. There are some customs in Kenya that are "interesting." One of them is that you put dung on the umbilical cord when the baby is born so, of course, the child will often get tetanus and other things! So we offer totally free maternity care.
Travel in Kenya is quite dangerous at night, so not easy. Very often the ambulance is called at night and it'll usually do a little tour around a community, and it will come back at two or three in the morning with at least three pregnant mums in labour at the same time. They share different discussions but they come into the hospital and they deliver safely. So that alone is saving many, many lives and again is thanks to you.
This is another project you were involved with about three years ago. It's water. We have had no fresh water at all in our area - it is really, really rural. The nearest water was a river or a big grotty area down a steep hill, where the women.. because they are the ones that do all the work! Excuse the men, I like men but the women do the work in Africa. The women walk down and collect the water and bring it up and the water was fairly foul so typhoid, cholera and dysentery was very, very common particularly with the little kids.
So with the money you sent we dug a bore hole and from that bore hole we have beautifully pure water. This is one of the outlets we have. We provided them in various communities for the women to be able to get clean water. These outlets are also run by our widows so they also have a small salary so they're also becoming, definitely, dignified with it. So it's a tremendous thing. You see on the right some of the girls going down one of the hills in bare feet and carrying 20 gallons on their heads. The women walk like models in Kenya they make you feel like an old fat frump, but they are truly amazing women.
This happened very recently. This is eight street boys, literally on the street, sleeping in the sheds under hedges or whatever. They landed at the house of my colleague and friend. They knew what she did with our orphans and they arrived at almost 10 at night. They had been badly abused and severely beaten. They arrived with these bags which look wonderful, but they're full of rubbish. They collected it off the streets thinking they could sell it for something.. So these eight kids were taken in and then they were threatened. People didn't like them getting help, because they had other uses for them.
This is where God is very good - we got a totally unexpected gift of the use of a house about an hour from where they were, so we moved them there. So these kids are now in that house, they're fully clothed. They have mattresses and beds and food and last week, they started school so these are eight kids that, you know, look quite different nowadays.
This is one of our main groups of widows. There are 15 widows in this group, they have over 100 grandchildren between them. Most of their own kids have died of HIV and various other things, leaving these fairly old ladies with totally, totally nothing. One of the houses is behind. These old ladies are intelligent, dignified grandmothers and great-grandmothers. They've never been to school, they sign with their right thumbprint and I always always find them inspirational - they are truly fantastic. This group in particular has an acre of land, which they own which W.O.R.K. gave them. They farm it and they each have a cow.
We now have over 200 active widows in various groups. They are the backbone of a lot of the work in Kenya. There was one recently who came up to me and I said "how are you?" and she said "well, Mary-Jane. I have food today and we are all well so it is Christmas" and off she walked and that was it. Today is okay, tomorrow will look after itself.
This is a project that, in a way, I am very ashamed of! I was a nurse a million years ago, but we couldn't understand why the grades of our girls in the second year of secondary school were going down dramatically. It slowly dawned on us that these kids didn't have sanitary pads so they were missing school for a week a month. So now we deliver boxes of sanitary pads to every school in our area, not just our own orphans, but all the girls schools and the girls grades are immediately coming up. If these young girls, who develop into young women, can't complete their education their life will be pretty awful, so education is crucial to these girls in particular.
Here's two of our orphans, Emily and Sophie, very poor, they're standing by their homes, made of a wood structure with just mud walls. This was before we took them to school. If you saw them now - one's in class two and the other in class three secondary Emily particularly is extremely bright and will go to university so these are just two of the kids that you have helped out of the many hundreds.
This is one of our real successes. This girl was on the street, selling her body for 50p just to feed her siblings. She was a little bit older and didn't want to go to school, so we took her to a vocational training college where they teach basic reading and writing if needed, but she did dress making. It was a two-year national course and she's now running her own business she has her own machine.
Now she's a good dressmaker, married with three kids and is doing extremely well. Again, she's an orphan, she was 20 something (they don't have birthdays), so to put her through a college and give her a career has saved her life, without any doubt.
Here is a boy called Kevin. We came across Kevin by mistake almost, and he's there with his sister. There were no adults, they were living in a very vague house and we wanted to take them to school. Kevin flatly refused to go to boarding school because he would not leave his sister who could then be abused in someway. So we kept them locally for a little while and they're both now in boarding school. Girls in particular can get attacked on the way to school, so boarding school does protect them and they're both doing very well which is really lovely.
The girl on the right is again one of our students - I think she's in form three now; that's her traditional home behind. She has no shoes, she's in bare feet, which is common.. very poor but again, she's an intelligent girl who now has a hope and a chance of a career. I keep trying to tell these women, young girls who become women, that there is a word "no. You do not have to get married." It's still tradition but they are beginning, as they go through university, they're getting gaining a confidence and awareness that they can have a career in their own right.
I'm very fond of this place: it's a vocational training centre. This group are all orphans and they had never been even to primary school, so when we found them they couldn't go to school because they felt they were not able to be with other kids. We took them to another vocational training college and then given this pre-year to teach them basic reading and writing. On completion of that they then chose a course of masonry, dressmaking, carpentry.. whatever skill they wanted.
We have our first girl plumber so we are really, really pleased with that; but this is to show you these kids, whatever state they arrive in and whatever their ability, we do take them and educate them in the best way we can that will help them.
One thing is that all the money you give does get to Kenya. All administration is covered by my family - I do not get paid! So never, never be worried as the money you give gets to the kids and the widows.
This is our hospital, on the right we've got the female ward and on the left the children's. We are frightfully pleased because we have pink bed covers, which no other hospital in Kenya does, so that everybody comes in and just looks at them. Sometimes when I go to see especially a woman in her bed, I see no sheets and I find the nurse and say "where are the sheets?" and the patient will say "no, no, no. I didn't want to make them dirty, so I folded them and put them on the side cupboard" and she sleeps on the mattress. They don't have sheets at home so they were a bit.. you get some lovely little entities. but that's two of our wards. On the right (in the white coat) we have a female clinical officer who's a bit like a G.P., but we have a woman now and it's so much nicer for a woman doctor to treat women patients.
This is a little picture to end with: two kids who live behind my house - they live more or less alone. They have an elderly grandmother and they cook with three stones and a saucepan on top.. very little food. They have to collect wood to light the fire so they can heat it. I have some fruit trees in my garden and these little dears are up my trees nicking my fruit regularly. But they're two little kids who just show you what can be in Kenya. There is a happiness there.. that they make happiness from very little.. so to see these kids each day is just truly delightful.
I hope that gives a bit of a glimpse of what you do for these vulnerable people in Kenya. It's a massive, massive "thank you." You have saved many, many lives.. I would say hundreds of lives!
The ambulance is, without any doubt, just tremendous! When it arrived and went out on the streets all the local motorbikes and the local band came out. They had never seen a vehicle like it and so they were escorting it down the road.
I will stop because I'll talk for hours otherwise, and Liam will get cross! I've known Liam quite a while now, but without him you would not have known about W.O.R.K., so you know, it's a huge thank you to him.
So, thank you all very much indeed!