Give a Child a Chance: Making of Moses

"Happy House has taken me from being nothing, to being something."

These 11 words, sum up  what a scholarship place in Happy House School has done for 15-year-old Moses Cosmus .
It has raised him up, lifted his spirits and given him inspiration and aspirations.
Moses is grateful for every second of every day that he is at Happy House, to Mama Sue and all those of you who support her work, for making it possible.
And for giving him opportuntities he could only dream of.

Like going on safari, where he not only saw the amazing wildlife that is his country's heritage, but where he also stayed in a lodge, swam in a swimming pool and, in the dining room,  learnt how to use a knife and fork
He is from a poor household, where luxuries are non existent, as are his classmates.
When as our first successful Kenya Certificate of Primary School Education candidates, Mama and Papa rewarded their achievement with an overnight trip to Tsavo East Game Reserve,  they were doing something that nobody in their families had ever done before.
Moses, is a clever boy who wants to succeed. With our help, and yours, he will.
We need sponsors for these kids, people who will invest in their futures and help them,as adults, to change their world for the better.
£20 a month is a small price to pay for such huge rewards. 
Please can you help Give a Child a Chance, by sponsoring a child TODAY.
To find out more go to: http://www.childrenofwatamu.net/school/scholarship-scheme
To set up your sponsorship online:

•  GO TO  https://www.justgiving.com/donation/direct?process=1&queryId=YwBoAGEAcgBpAHQAeQA9ADEANAA5ADEANAA1AA
• SET UP YOUR MONTHLY PAYMENT,  £20 is the optimum amount
• EMAIL YOUR JUSTGIVING CONFIRMATION to elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net along the following details:  Name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address, date of first payment and amount.
• If you prefer to set up a standing order via your bank, or have any queries, please email elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net
• To make a donation: https://www.justgiving.com/childrenofwatamu/Donate https://www.justgiving.com/childrenofwatamu/Donate

Give a Child a Chance: Kelvin's dream

Kelvin's dreams of a career in medicine were dashed when, at the end of his primary schooling, there was no money for him to continue his education.
This bright boy, with so much to give, was devastated.
For as long as he remembers he has wanted to be a doctor, specifically a neurosurgeon.
And if, as we hope, he achieves his ambition, just think of the lives he will save.
Yet, without a scholarship in our school, this young man who is so focussed and so bright, would not have been in any school.
His education would have stopped with his Certificate of Primary School Education.
By giving him a free place in our school, and all that goes with it, he now has a chance to chase his dream. 
We desperately need your help to make this possible.
 It costs 65p a day (£20 a month) to sponsor a kid like Kelvin and to put kids from poverty and despair in education and on the road out of poverty.
Please watch this video and ask yourself if there is anything you buy each day you could do without.
 It could actually buy a child a future, 
By becoming a sponsor you can truly make a difference.
Please can you Give a Child a Chance, today.
To find out more go to: http://www.childrenofwatamu.net/school/scholarship-scheme
To set up your sponsorship online:

•  GO TO  https://www.justgiving.com/donation/direct?process=1&queryId=YwBoAGEAcgBpAHQAeQA9ADEANAA5ADEANAA1AA
• SET UP YOUR MONTHLY PAYMENT,  £20 is the optimum amount
• EMAIL YOUR JUSTGIVING CONFIRMATION to elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net along the following details:  Name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address, date of first payment and amount.
• If you prefer to set up a standing order via your bank, or have any queries, please email elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net

Give a Child a Chance: Nasri's courage

Nasri Juma has gained much from being a Happy House scholarship student.
Education, food, new experiences, clothes are now all his.
But when he talks about Happy House there's a poignant phrase that stands out above all.
"Happy House has given me courage, " he says.
Nasri lives with his grandmother in her home. They have little.. His mum left him there a long time ago. 
When he came to Happy House as one of our Dr Danwata scholars in 2014 he was shy and lacking in self-belief.
There had been huge gaps in his schoolsing because there was no money to pay, hence him now being in first form secondary at the age of 19.
But  Nasri never lost his thirst for knowledge, school was the one place he wanted to be.
With an education he will be able to break free of the poverty that has dominated his life and will helphim to make a  better life for his grandmother too. 
Nasri was one of our first Class 8 Primary kids to take the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education. They all passed with flying colours.  We finished our secondary school just in time for them to move in as our first Form 1.
Happy House has become Nasri's second home. He comes in to help in the garden, to kick a ball around with the other boys and if he's really lucky, and Mama's about, he might just get a first taste of the freshly bake pizza!
.Please watch  the video  as Nasri talks about Happy House and what it means to him and ask yourself if you could afford £20 a month to sponsor to Give a Child a Chance.

To find out more go to: http://www.childrenofwatamu.net/school/scholarship-scheme
To set up your sponsorship online:

•  GO TO  https://www.justgiving.com/donation/direct?process=1&queryId=YwBoAGEAcgBpAHQAeQA9ADEANAA5ADEANAA1AA
• SET UP YOUR MONTHLY PAYMENT,  £20 is the optimum amount
• EMAIL YOUR JUSTGIVING CONFIRMATION to elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net along the following details:  Name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address, date of first payment and amount.
• If you prefer to set up a standing order via your bank, or have any queries, please email elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net
• To make a donation: https://www.justgiving.com/childrenofwatamu/Donate

Give a Child a Chance: Feeding hungry minds

There's so much more to feeding a child’s hungry mind than providing an education.

You also have to feed their hungry mouths and fill their empty tummies. 
They need healthy meals to give the fuel they need to power them through each day.
 At Happy House, Mama Sue thinks of everything and in today's video she shares some vital facts and figures.

When she learnt that many of the kids coming into our school on our free-place Dr Danwata Scholarship Scheme, were arriving without breakfast she set up a breakfast club.

So every morning we not only have all the kids living at the Happy House to feed, we also have another 75+ arriving  to join them for a breakfast of porridge, sweet potatoes or fresh baked bread.

As Mama explains in today’s video, breakfast is just the start of it - 770 meals/healthy snacks are served by Happy House every day!

We give those children and young people on our Dr Danwata Scholarship Scheme books, uniforms, PE kits, shoes, school bags to equip them for their education in our well-resourced kindergarten, primary and secondary schools where they have enthusiastic and encouraging teachers.

But there’s more too.

Solar lights to cut down the risk of burns and fires caused by kerosene lamps in homes without power,  deodorants, sanitary pads, toothbrushes, shoe polishes – small things that make a huge difference in homes where  every day brings another struggle to earn what it takes to eke out a meagre existence.

For £20 a month (65p a day) you can Give a Child a Chance.

Please sponsor a Happy House child today and Give a Child a Chance forever

To find out more go to: http://www.childrenofwatamu.net/school/scholarship-scheme
To set up your sponsorship online:

•  GO TO  https://www.justgiving.com/donation/direct?process=1&queryId=YwBoAGEAcgBpAHQAeQA9ADEANAA5ADEANAA1AA
• SET UP YOUR MONTHLY PAYMENT,  £20 is the optimum amount
• EMAIL YOUR JUSTGIVING CONFIRMATION to elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net along the following details:  Name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address, date of first payment and amount.
• If you prefer to set up a standing order via your bank, or have any queries, please email elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net
• To make a donation: https://www.justgiving.com/childrenofwatamu/Donate

Give a Child a Chance: 65p a day buys the most precious gift

Give a Child a Chance - this the theme of our campaign to get more people to discover the joys of sponsoring a Happy House kid.
£20 a month, that's just 65p a day, is all it costs to change a life and to put hope into the heart of child from despair
At this time we have more than 80 kids without a sponsor.  Some are living in our full-time care but most are kids, from abject poverty, who are receiving free education in our school.
These are children and young people, like Mercy who features in today's video, who are living with relatives in the local community.
By giving them education and all the other things that entails, we are putting them on the road out of poverty.
And we know for certain that each one of these kids will go on to make the most of the opportunities they are being given.
They have a burning desire to succeed - to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, farmers, pilots.
Each child we educate, will as an adult, go on to educate their own children and they theirs. The Happy House ripple effect will widen with every generation that follows.

Mama and Papa with some of our scholarship students

Our founder, Mama Sue, dreams of having 100 children on our Dr Danwata Scholarship Scheme - she named it in honour of and thanks to Dr Falalu Danwata, the Blackpool consulant oncologist who treated her when she had breast cancer.
From a humble upbringing in Nigera, he has gone on to become an extraordinary doctor who has done so much for so many people facing the nightmare that is cancer.
He told Mama Sue that she is giving children the most precious gift that nobody, but nobody, could ever take away: Education.
It is a gift they prize as Mercy tells us in today's video.
Please can you Give a Child a Chance, today.
To find out more go to: http://www.childrenofwatamu.net/school/scholarship-scheme
To set up your sponsorship online:

•  GO TO  https://www.justgiving.com/donation/direct?process=1&queryId=YwBoAGEAcgBpAHQAeQA9ADEANAA5ADEANAA1AA
• SET UP YOUR MONTHLY PAYMENT,  £20 is the optimum amount
• EMAIL YOUR JUSTGIVING CONFIRMATION to elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net along the following details:  Name, address, postcode, telephone number, email address, date of first payment and amount.
• If you prefer to set up a standing order via your bank, or have any queries, please email elizabethgomm@childrenofwatamu.net

Happiness is being a Happy House kid, by Husna

Husna writes her blog

 Life has been transformed for Husna and her brother Hussein since they came to Happy House .

Their widowed mum, caring for her own mother who had a severe stroke, was in dire straits, unable to make ends meet or send her children to school.

In Happy House care, for as long as they need it, they have become part of our wonderful family. As Husna tells us:

At the Happy House we have gardens, trees, house, children, mama, papa, uncles and aunties, so many people.

I have my friends like Sanita, Salama, Dorris, Lily, Mariam and Jacinta. Everybody is my friend.

I thank my sponsors who have sponsored me because they love me and all of us here.

I like to play rounders, ball passing, hide and seek. We have many games at Happy House.

Our school is wonderful and shining and I am learning well. Last term when we were closing, I was in position two.

I know everybody is so happy with our Happy House School.

We have been doing times tables and I know my two, three, four, five and ten times tables. Soon I will know all of them.

I thank Mama, Papa and Auntie Libby for everything you have done for us and for taking good care of all of us. Thank you. I love you.

Opening today - our one week charity shop

There's a chance to bag a bargain and boost our Happy House funds in Poulton, Lancashire, for the next week.

We are taking over the Poulton Methodist Church Charity Shop in Chapel Street opening at 10am today.

The church kindly lets the shop to different charities for a week at a time, so many good causes benefit over the year.

Elizabeth

We have lots of donated items clothes (some never worn), children's clothes, games, toys and dressing up clothes.

Then there's household items and bric-a-brac, dvds and books (for all ages) ... shoes and accessories.

Helene and Margaret

Elizabeth Gomm, Helene Stephens, Susan Carr and Margaret White got the shop all stocked for the start of trade today, which also happens to be Poulton Gala Day.

" We have so much variety," said Elizabeth "  all kinds of everything!" 

She and Helene will be on shop duty all day today so pop in and say hello.

They will be able to tell you anything you want to know about the charity and how to sponsor a child

The shop will be open today, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10am to 3.30pm and on Friday from 10am until 1pm.

Thank you to everyone who is helping in the shop over the next week. We are so grateful to you for giving up your time to help our family.

We desperately need funds to maintain and develop our work with children in need  - those who find a a safe and loving  home in our Happy House and others from the local community, from abject poverty, who would be out of school, if it were not for the  education they receive on free place scholarships in our school

Please come and splash your cash (a little will buy a lot) and every single penny we raise will make a difference to a young life.

See you soon.