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An article about Lorraine Jardine's adventures in Kenya. Lorriane comments, "I am very pleased that more people will get to know of their wonderful work".
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Mt. Lebanon native raises funds to expand orphanage in Kenya
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Just about a year ago, former Mt. Lebanon resident Kate Fletcher set a goal to raise $500,000 to build a permanent home for the orphaned girls she has cared for and educated in Kenya for the past five years.
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Post-Gazette South, 9/30/10 – Pittsburgh, PA
Just about a year ago, former Mt. Lebanon resident Kate Fletcher set a goal to raise $500,000 to build a permanent home for the orphaned girls she has cared for and educated in Kenya for the past five years.
As with each goal Mrs. Fletcher has set since she founded Hekima Place outside of Nairobi, she hit the mark. As a result, a dedication was held Sept. 11 at the new complex, which is now under construction.
"What a wonderful day we had," Mrs. Fletcher wrote in a recent e-mail to supporters.
Mrs. Fletcher, 72, wanted the new complex constructed so the girls would know they had a permanent home for the future. The original complex is operated on leased land and in leased buildings.
The new complex will hold six residential buildings where the girls, the staff and Mrs. Fletcher will live and have offices. In addition, there will be a large dining hall where dinner will be served daily and meetings and celebrations held.
It was in the partially built dining hall, on the new property overlooking the Rift Valley, that the dedication was held with a schedule full of performances by the girls and staff and blessings by local clergy.
The programs included raising the flags of the five countries that have provided support to Hekima Place: France, Italy, Canada, England and the United States. Then the Kenyan flag was raised to the country's national anthem.
There was a reading and reflection ceremony by a local pastor and a blessing ceremony of the buildings and staff.
"We had about 200 guests and enough food for the children of the area who wandered into the open gates to see what was happening," Mrs. Fletcher wrote in her e-mail.
All of the girls performed song and dance routines, divided into groups by age. The oldest girls read the poem "Invictus," which is said to have sustained Nelson Mandela during his years of imprisonment.
Also joining in the performances was a group of men who are part of the construction team on the complex. They are members of the local Maasai population in Kenya and they wore colorful outfits and jewelry and danced for the crowd.
The celebration ended with the girls singing Celine Dion's "Because You Loved Me" to the staff of women, known as the "house mums," who care for them daily.
"It was unbelievable," said Jim DiPiero of Mt. Lebanon, who is chairman of the Hekima Place board and was among about a dozen U.S. supporters who attended the dedication ceremony.
Mr. DiPiero said all of Mrs. Fletcher's supporters are amazed at how she has expanded the orphanage and boarding school over the past five years. She started in 2005 with about $50,000 she raised from local churches and 10 girls who lived in a rented cottage. At the time, Mrs. Fletcher was paying her employees with the proceeds from her Social Security check.
Currently, she is housing 63 girls and one boy, Johnny, 2, who will be adopted soon by a Canadian couple. The oldest of the young women from Hekima Place is attending a university this year.
Mrs. Fletcher's goal is for all of the girls to attend either a university or trade school upon graduation.
"The whole point of Hekima Place is to do well in school so you can do well in life," she said. She's hoping to have the girls moved into the completed new complex in December.
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Purpose and meaning in life isn’t one-size-fits-all
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A wonderful article written by author and friend, Daryn Kagan to Dayton Daily News.
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By Daryn Kagan, DarynKagan.com, Sunday, October 17, 2010
http://www.daytondailynews.com/lifestyle/purpose-and-meaning-in-life-isnt-one-size-fits-all-978866.html
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Hekima Place provides a home for orphaned girls to flourish
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Kate Fletcher’s story is both ordinary and extraordinary. As she admits, everything in her life prepared her for what she is doing now: operating a home for orphaned girls on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. Through the efforts of this 70-year-old widow from Pittsburgh, the power of one is becoming the power of many, helping Kenyans -- especially girls and women
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National Catholic Reporter – 7/8/09
Investment in Kenya’s future
Hekima Place provides a home for orphaned girls to flourish
Jul. 08, 2009
By Dana Greene
Kate Fletcher, center, with some of the girls of Hekima Place (Richard Roesel)
Kate Fletcher’s story is both ordinary and extraordinary. As she admits, everything in her life prepared her for what she is doing now: operating a home for orphaned girls on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. Through the efforts of this 70-year-old widow from Pittsburgh, the power of one is becoming the power of many, helping Kenyans -- especially girls and women -- help themselves.
Hekima Place, the home Fletcher founded in 2005, acts on what international agencies have begun to acknowledge: To invest in girls, especially in their education, is to invest in the community.
As a young girl herself, Dorothy Kane, as she was known then, lived for four years in a Catholic orphanage in Philadelphia when her father left her family and her mother was unable to care for her. After she finished high school, she became Sr. Kathleen, a member of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer, working as a teacher and medical technologist. During 22 years of religious life she earned an undergraduate degree in education and a master’s degree in public health and taught as a university lecturer. She left the convent at age 40, and seven years later she married Leonard Fletcher, a widower dentist and fellow Catholic.
When her husband died after 16 years of marriage, Kate Fletcher’s life circumstances permitted her to fulfill a lifelong dream -- to go to Africa.
It was the search engine Google that served as her guardian angel. Typing in the words “Africa,” “AIDS orphans” and “volunteer” she was lead to Nyumbani, a children’s home for AIDS orphans outside of Nairobi, founded by Jesuit Fr. Angelo D’Agostino. Fletcher sold her house and left to work as a volunteer for two years at Nyumbani.
Kenya, once the jewel of Africa, has become in popular imagination a place of despair. It has one of the world’s highest incidences of HIV/AIDS, some 2 million orphans, severe economic problems resulting from years of drought, widespread corruption, and over 1, 000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced by the violence of last year’s disputed presidential elections. Although statistics can distort, in this case they do not. Life expectancy in Kenya has declined from 60 years in 1990 to 53 years in 2005; unemployment is at 40 percent, and tourism revenue dropped 32 percent in the first six months of 2008 against the same period the previous year.
As Fletcher came to understand the needs of Kenya’s orphans, she decided to establish a new venture, a home for girls, not those suffering from AIDS but those who had experienced the loss of parents. Because they were not ill, they were excluded from residences for infected children; nonetheless, they experienced the same trauma as other orphans. Food, shelter and the most rudimentary access to health care are imperiled without adult care and advocacy. Without parents, orphan children often have to take on the care of siblings and are forced to leave school in order to work. Some become scavenger street children in the huge slum of Kibera. Girls are subject to increased incidence of sexual exploitation and are more vulnerable to becoming HIV-infected. In Kenya, girls are three times more likely to have HIV than their male counterparts.
World Bank studies indicate that closing the education gender gap in sub-Sahara Africa would have led to faster economic growth between the years 1960 to 1992, and that an extra year of female education can reduce infant mortality by 5 to 10 percent. The education of girls means not only greater economic productivity but that productivity is shared with their children in the form of greater access to food and health care. This is not the case with boys’ increased economic productivity. To invest in a boy’s education is to invest in an individual; to invest in a girl’s is to invest in a family.
What Fletcher knew was that a girl’s education involved more than mere access to education; it meant inspiring, supporting, encouraging girls to believe in themselves and to desire to realize their potential. With the support of friends and members of several churches she set to work.
In 2005 she opened Hekima Place (“Hekima” means wisdom in Arabic), a home for 10 girls. “Mum Kate,” as she is known, is now chief dreamer, organizer, fundraiser and director of a large female family dedicated to the proposition that given safety and access to food, shelter, health care and education these girls would flourish. She took as inspiration the life of Kenyan Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, environmentalist and defender of orphans. Fletcher created a registered nonprofit, established a board of directors, and hired several Kenya staff, other “mums” who supervise the girls when they are not in school.
Today, Hekima Place provides a home for 53 girls who range from preschool to college age. Although the physical environment is modest and orderly, its ethos is lively. Mum Kate and her staff know that academic progress builds on a constellation of psychological factors. The ordering of the day, the rituals developed, and the expectations established all work to encourage the full development of these girls. References to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Erik Erikson’s stages of human development pepper Kate Fletcher’s conversation. In a multitude of practical ways she has found opportunity to convince these girls that they are academically able, valued and responsible for their lives.
The day begins with prayers, breakfast, and then transport to nearby public and private schools. When the girls return there are chores to be done, like working in the garden and caring for the younger children, dinner to be eaten, and mandatory study hours for those enrolled in school. Naturally shy girls are encouraged to speak in a firm voice, to look others in the eye, to talk out problems at weekly house meetings, to express gratitude for the good things of life, to discuss topics at the dinner table. A celebration is held for each girl’s birthday and her peers regale her with tales of why they appreciate her. Academic achievement is acknowledged at every opportunity. Play is encouraged among younger children. Dramas are created and performed. Friday and Saturday nights are given over to movies and club activities, and on Sunday mornings the girls are trundled off, depending on their affiliation, to nearby Pentecostal, Anglican or Catholic churches.
These 53 girls are fortunate, and they know it. Although Hekima Place is a happy, lively environment, there is a seriousness of purpose that is palpable among the girls who, when they become teens, commit to a covenant promising not to drink alcohol or home brews, take drugs, smoke cigarettes, steal, lie or engage in sexual activity. This is the practical application of Hekima Place’s core values of integrity, prudence, wisdom and compassion. Thus far only two girls, both taken in at age 15 and unable to meet the requirements of the covenant, have been asked to leave.
The girls at Hekima Place represent nine of the 42 ethnic groups of Kenya. The names of these groups are inscribed across the front of the main building along with words from Kenya’s national anthem: “Justice be our shield and defender. May we dwell in unity, peace and liberty.” These lofty aspirations run counter to the ethnic tensions that are under the surface in Kenyan society and exploded in last year’s violence. But Hekima Place attempts to inculcate a solidarity around academic achievement and individual responsibility that mutes these divisions.
Fletcher is the first to acknowledge that the power of one is dependent on others. Initially Hekima Place was funded through her own savings and contributions of friends and members of churches in the Pittsburgh area. She subsequently secured grants from four foundations: Nathan Cummings, Dominica, Pittsburgh and Vista Hermosa, and has attracted donors from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy and Kenya. Hekima Place recruits volunteers to work for short stints, relying on them to be ambassadors on their return, and “big sister” and sponsorship programs to adopt each girl, writing to her and remembering her with gifts on her birthday and at Christmas.
Fletcher has secured training for the staff to take greater responsibility for accounting, programming and personnel supervision. Although she is omnipresent, her principal task is to serve as lead fundraiser and contact person. Her insistent hope is that through Hekima Place these girls will augment the ranks of women in the judiciary, the legislature and the boardrooms of Kenya, ensuring a future in which children are protected, justice is done and peace prevails. These are no mean aspirations.
Recently two developments have occurred that portend well for Kenya’s girls: The government has established universal, free primary education, and the incidence of AIDS is declining. In the meantime, the power of one remains. As it garners support it becomes the power of many, realizing Kenya’s national motto: Harambee, “Let us all pull together.” The future of the nation’s youth, particularly its girls, depends on it.
Dana Greene is dean emerita of Oxford College of Emory University in Atlanta.
On the Web
File copy forwarded 1/11/2010
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Hekima Place, a refuge for AIDS orphans, looks to expand
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Four years ago former Mt. Lebanon resident Kate Fletcher left the area with about $50,000 she had raised, determined to start a boarding school in Kenya for girls who were
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Pittsburgh Post Gazette – July 9, 2009
Mt. Lebanon woman sets up home for girls in Kenya
Hekima Place, a refuge for AIDS orphans, looks to expand
Thursday, July 09, 2009
By Mary Niederberger, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 Hekima Place in Kenya, an orphanage for girls run and founded by a Mt. Lebanon woman, Kate Fletcher (second left in top row), with a group of the kids and two volunteers who came to visit. The volunteers are Lorraine Jardine of Ontario and Mary Jo Davila-Ryan of Buffalo. Both women are retired teachers. The others are students and visitors.
Four years ago former Mt. Lebanon resident Kate Fletcher left the area with about $50,000 she had raised, determined to start a boarding school in Kenya for girls who were orphaned by AIDS.
She turned that dream into a reality, and today, with the support of a number of local churches and community organizations, Mrs. Fletcher operates Hekima Place as a home to 53 girls and one young boy.
Now she's setting her sights even higher.
She is hoping to raise $500,000 to create a permanent home for her charges. She would like to move her operation from rental property to a 10-acre plot she has purchased about 10 miles away overlooking the Southern Rift Valley.
To jump-start the effort, Mrs. Fletcher, 71, withdrew $40,000 from her personal retirement fund and donated it to the venture.
In the past, she has used her Social Security checks to pay salaries and bills at Hekima Place.
Now she and a board of directors in Pittsburgh are embarking on a capital campaign to raise the $500,000 required to erect six buildings on the complex.
Her dream is to have four houses for children, each with a house mother. She also would like two additional houses -- one for the volunteers who visit and work, and the second to serve as her home and the administrative center of Hekima Place.
She's hoping to be able to move her current residents to the new complex by December 2010 and to eventually expand to house a total of 60 children.
It's an extraordinary effort and an ambitious fund-raising schedule, she conceded.
But, she said, she started her effort on a wing and prayer, and has followed her heart each step of the way -- and has been successful so far.
"I know this is a leap of faith. But how can people think God is not involved in this when it's come so far?" Mrs. Fletcher said. "I mean, I was someone who wouldn't even go to the movies alone, and then one day I got on a plane and went to Africa and did this."
Jim DiPiero, of Mt. Lebanon, president of the local Hekima Place board of directors, said the board understood it has its work cut out in raising funds.
"We understand her vision. We want to get out of the rental because we just don't know if it will be available for the long term. Plus we want the permanence of having a place to call home for the girls, a place they know will be there," Mr. DiPiero said.
He said an official capital campaign kickoff will be held in the coming weeks after the board has a chance to meet and organize the effort.
Another Hekima Place supporter, Nancy McCann, also of Mt. Lebanon, said she was looking forward to joining the board and helping to raise the funds.
She said she had been inspired by Mrs. Fletcher's efforts since first reading newspaper accounts.
Ms. McCann recently visited Hekima Place along with her 19-year-old daughter, Rebecca Robbins.
"It was much better than I ever expected. I went over there thinking that the girls had difficult lives. I think I expected there would be a level of sadness or I would feel sorry for them.
"But it was completely different. There is a level of joy and happiness that just radiates from these kids. They are just so thankful for the lives they have, so appreciative," Ms. McCann said.
She said that since she was able to see firsthand the improvements in the girls' lives made by Mrs. Fletcher's efforts, she was anxious to help with the fundraising for the permanent home for Hekima Place.
"It's one thing to give to a charity and not see the impact. But I can see what she is doing for these girls. It's a stable family atmosphere; they have relationships with each other, and they look at each other as sisters; and they have great adoration for her," Ms. McCann said.
The Rev. Kenneth White, who is pastor of St. Scholastica Parish in Aspinwall, has been one of Mrs. Fletcher's supporters from the beginning. He was pastor at St. Thomas More, which was previously Mrs. Fletcher's parish, and he allowed her to raise funds among his congregation for the startup and continued support of Hekima Place.
This weekend, he will welcome her to his current parish to make a fundraising pitch there.
Father White commended Mrs. Fletcher for undertaking such a daunting task at an age when others are "sitting back in our Stratolounger and taking care of our arthritis."
He said Mrs. Fletcher "leads with her heart" and spurs others into action, helping to make her vision become a reality.
"She's like a lady who cuts the path with a machete," he said. "I have so much admiration for her."
First published on July 9, 2009 at 12:00 am
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