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http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/jun/30/charlottesville-organization-working-help-kenyan-o-ar-2025632/

Published: June 30, 2012

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Charlottesville organization working to helpKenyan orphansBy Samantha Koon

When Hartley Jefferies came back to the United States in 2009 after spending a yearteaching in Kenya, she knew she wanted to do something to help the orphans in thevillage she had called home.

This month, Jefferies and her charity, Friends of Belwop, won a $50,000 grant fromCultivate Wines’ GIVE charity competition, which funded the purchase of a new plot ofland and will allow the organization to construct an orphanage large enough to house100 children.

“There’s a huge need in the town that’s called Nyeri. So many families cannot afford tokeep the kids that they have,” Jefferies said, adding that many children in Nyeri lose theirparents to AIDS. Others are abused and abandoned on the town’s streets.

While in Kenya, Jefferies got to know Veronica Mumbi, who runs the Belwop RescueCenter, one of the town’s few resources for orphaned or abandoned children. TheRescue Center was started in 2005 out of Mumbi’s personal savings, and is run withoutany government assistance, Jefferies noted.

“She was just telling me how she didn’t know how she was going to feed these 25 kidsfor the next six weeks or so,” Jefferies said, adding that Mumbi and more than 20orphans lived together in a small three-bedroom house.

Upon returning home, Jefferies turned her attention to raising money for the orphans inNyeri.

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“My first steps in getting the nonprofit off the ground were creating a website to tell thestory of the kids and show their photos, writing letters and emails to family and friendsand calling people to ask for their support,” she said.

Jefferies said the next “natural step” was to make her project an official nonprofitorganization. The Friends of Belwop is based in Charlottesville, but partners with anothergroup in California that also benefits the Rescue Center. Everyone who works with thegroup is a volunteer, Jefferies said.

There are five “core members” of the Friends of Belwop team, but Jefferies said theorganization has “many, many, many followers” throughout the country, thanks to socialmedia outlets such as Facebook and Tumblr.

Katelyn Sandberg, a spokeswoman for Cultivate Wines, said that the Friends of Belwop’sstrong social media presence helped them win the competition. Each quarter, CultivateWines holds a competition for nonprofit organizations that support education or basichuman needs. Thirty organizations are chosen from each quarter’s submissions andhave two months to collect votes.

“We don’t actually choose who wins,” Sandberg explained. The organization with themost votes gets $50,000, and the next five top organizations each win $10,000.

“They’re doing awesome things,” Sandberg said of Jefferies and the other volunteers atthe Friends of Belwop. “It’s just awesome to see what they’re doing, and that they’re soexcited about it, too,” she added.

Jefferies said that the new plot of land already has been purchased, but the children arestill in the smaller orphanage for now. The newly purchased property has two existinghouses on it, which Jefferies said will not be demolished.

“We’ll definitely be expanding on the [houses] that are there right now,” she said.Jefferies added that at this early stage she is unsure of the details of the construction, orwhen the project will be completed.

She will return to Kenya next summer to help with construction, she said.

“This whole grant and this whole competition is bringing them so much hope becausethey’re a group of kids who have never known a real home,” Jefferies said. “To be able tohave a place that they can call their very own and that will be large enough to handlethem is something that is just incredible.”

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