Simon and Kenyakids – first part

This story began in 2001 with an email from Simon from Kawangware, who lived with his wife Helen in Kawangware in Kenya.

Unfortunately, it now ends – 21 years later – without the desired success. It is impossible to tell everything that has happened in these years in one story. So there will be more to come. Through my work in the USA, I had connections to IRFF (International Relief and Friendship Foundation). Simon and Helen also had connections to IRFF and so I received their call for help from Kenya. They lived in Nairobi and often visited Kawangware, which is about 15 km from Nairobi, to help street children in particular. Kawangware is a huge slum with around 130,000 inhabitants.

When Julia and I read the email, we spontaneously felt a desire to help as much as we could. We felt that we could trust Simon and Helen.
At the time, I was working for an internet provider and created a website. This is how www.kenyakids-help.com was born. Much of what I cannot tell you here can be viewed there by anyone who is interested until July 2022. When I look back on the years, the song “Those were the days” by Mary Hopkin comes to mind. They were years full of hope and disappointment, dreams and tragedies.

In the next few years, donations and relief supplies were sent to Kenyakids, mainly by friends from the USA, Germany, Spain and Austria. Whenever help arrived in Kenya, Simon sent photos. It was an uplifting feeling, especially to see the grateful and happy faces of the children. Simon and Helen wanted to make the everyday, sad life of the street children easier by founding a football club. Simon called the idea “Helen’s Football Club”.

Simon and Helen’s life had not been easy since their wedding. In 1998, Simon was one of the many victims of a bomb attack at the US embassy in Kenya. After many operations and a lot of care, including from Helen, he was able to walk again with crutches around two years later. The next stroke of fate followed in 2002.
Helen had visited her family in Cameroon. On the way back to the airport, she was killed by a knife attack. Perhaps some people would have declared the end of the future aid project at this point. Not so Simon, he saw poverty as one of the causes of violence and therefore wanted to do even more to fight poverty.

I researched on the Internet and discovered the possibility of sending a project plan to the “Bill + Melinda Gates Foundation” and asking for support. In the name of IRFF Austria, because Kenyakids was not yet registered as an association at the time, we sent our 5-page plan. A summary of the plan can still be read on the website under “Vision + Goals”.

After a few weeks, a polite rejection came from the Gates Foundation.

So ends the first part.