My Passion with Heidi Waters: Touched by Kenyan children's hunger for education

Heidi Waters, weight management services manager at City Healthcare Partnership, NHS Hull, talks about the Riverside Children's Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Ever since my sister visited the Riverside Children's Centre in Kawangware Slum in Nairobi during her gap year in 2002, myself and my parents have been touched by the children's attitude to learning and the happiness that they have in their lives despite having so little. A local Pastor, Rev Hudson Mukondi Kuyanda, started the informal primary school in 2000 offering free education to children unable to access state education due to poverty.

The school was open to orphans, refugees and the less fortunate, but despite the lack of materials and its location, next to a dusty main road, the children worked hard and enjoyed the opportunity to learn. Following the success of the primary school, Swanland High School opened in 2003 when Pastor Hudson's son, Robinson, needed to start his high school education.

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With a corrugated iron room and a mud floor, the pupils attended school and throughout the day they had nothing to eat or drink from 9am until 4pm. This is where my passion really began. In 2002, my parents returned from visiting the school and offered to start a feeding programme for the children. Once the feeding programme began the numbers at the school grew rapidly and the school has now grown from 100 pupils to 500. The feeding programme was supported by funding from people in the local community of Swanland, where my parents live and where I grew up.

Many people from the village and church support the school with monthly donations used to buy food, pay for water and rent. But it's particularly difficult at the moment as Kenya is experiencing a severe drought.

In 2004, however, there was a setback when an armed gang burnt the school to the ground and the school was left with nothing. Orphans and refugees who boarded there slept outside for nearly two months until the school was reconstructed, helped by donations from the local church and residents in the East Riding village of Swanland.

The school is thriving again, with some of the pupils even going on to university. The school employs 50 staff and is registered with the Kenya Education Department for 477 pupils.

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My fianc and I visited the school in February and we are always overcome by the happiness of the children. My passion for being involved in something like this is only at the beginning, and it's a far cry from the work I do at NHS Hull.