Maintain Hope coffee morning well supported

There was a strong turnout from supporters and friends of the Maintain Hope charity this morning at the Coffee Morning hosted by Esther Reddy and Joe Dooley and their family, writes Brian Byrne. The event is an annual fundraiser at White Hall Cottage.

Charity founder Gerry O'Donoghue told the Diary that the community in the Ngong area outside Nairobi has come through a severe winter with outbreaks of cholera and typhus and other waterborne diseases due to floods. Many of the Maintain Hope-supported people there are HIV-positive single-parent families who required extra medical support. "What are now curable diseases for most people could carry them off, so we had to be very vigilant," he says. “Fortunately, we had the resources to look after them, but that did mean some of our other programmes had to be curtailed or postponed." He adds that things are back on an even keel, and the children they support within their families are healthy and will be able to go back to school at the end of the summer.

The charity currently supports 82 children, of whom just under half are in primary school, around 20 attend second level, and the balance in vocational training or third level. From the early years of support, there are now Maintain Hope graduates in computer science, teaching, nursing, marketing, and languages. "It's extraordinary progress from what is a minuscule organisation in the grand scheme of things. The vast majority of our resources and our help come from the wider Kilcullen areas, and that's the effect which that support has had."

(We'll have a further post from the conversation later.)

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