A Ray of Hope

Every morning, I wake up with a prayer in my heart, "Dear God may you use me to make a difference, with the little I'm blessed with, help me put a smile in someone's life."

I know that in a small way, God hears me, and gives me wonderful chances like this one to serve him, to serve humanity, and to make a difference.

At the beginning of each year, my friends and I come together, identify a needy institution in our community then make it a calendar commitment to contribute towards the project. Come December, we visit the institution; share lunch and Christmas gifts with them then contribute towards ensuring their lives in the following months after our visit are easier lived.

We started this initiative in 2010, where we visited Meru General Hospital, Maternity Ward, shared gifts with the new mothers and their bundles of joy, presently to make their motherhood journey smoother. 

In 2011, we visited Njia Special School, a school for the deaf, mentally and physically disabled children. The management relies on Government Aid in running the institution, but as we would all expect, kids with special needs require Special Care hence their maintenance cost runs a bit higher than that of normal primary school going children.

Being a boarding school, the school had a greater responsibility. We spent the day with them, presented them gifts, enough mattresses, dry food, new uniforms, washing basins, learning material, sanitary towels among many other donations.

In 2012, we visited Kamatungu Special School for the deaf in Tharaka. The school had one text book per class, which normally, is the teacher’s copy. This is without doubt an uphill task. Learning sign language, the teacher explained, requires persisted practice and sharing one copy in a class of thirty pupils, well posed a great challenge.

After our visit, one copy would now be shared by a maximum of three pupils, something the teacher had been praying about since joining the school.

Last weekend, we were blessed to hold our annual charity event of 2013 at Machaku Special Unit, an institution that takes care of physically and mentally disabled children in the community. 

The children come from very humble backgrounds, and their parents cannot afford to provide them two meals per day, save for the special care and treatment that is required to cater for the children’s needs. 

The head teacher, Victor Mbaabu, was humbled when I gave him a call months back to let him know we were planning on visiting his school in December. He gave us a list of the school’s challenges, the feeding programme being the principal test. The 14th day of December, 2013 was finally here and we spent it with the kids.

We played:

Sung and Danced:

We ate to our fill:

Then we presented the little Christmas gifts we had. We bought the school teaching materials, charts and brain stimulators, dry food to last them a whole learning term, sanitary towels to last the girls the whole of 2014, each child got a blanket to carry home, every parent got 2Kgs of Chapati Flour to cook on Christmas Day and many other presents.

This is our ten percent. Sharing the little we have, makes a huge difference in the lives of these beautiful people of God.


This boy is physically and mentally disabled. I might not be able to permanently change that situation, but showing him he is loved, seeing this adorable smile, is a memory I will hold in my heart till the day I die.