HISTORY OF CHILDREN OF PURPOSE SCHOOL
Children of Purpose School (orphanage) was started by Josiah and Judith who are the directors. It is situated in Bondo Village, Siaya County in Western part of Kenya, East Africa. Judith has had a deep passion for orphans and widows since childhood. She would fetch water from rivers to bathe the old widows in her community, sweep their houses, and bring firewood to cook for them. Her joy was to see these old widows happy, clean and have something to eat.
In their village many children were left orphaned due to an HIV under the care of poor widows, old grandmothers or the orphans themselves became the heads of families at a tender age. Other times the orphans were employed at a tender age as house helps by rich relatives or simply went into the streets to beg for food and money to fill their stomachs. In 2003 Judith and Josiah experienced this first hand in their lives when their relatives died from HIV/AIDS leaving young orphans under their care. It was at this point that Judith & Josiah began to take in other orphans to live with them in their home along with their own three children. The goal was to give them education, shelter, healthcare, and most of all to introduce them to the LOVE of GOD.
In 2004, Judith started a womens’ group consisting of widows and poor women (many of which were infected with HIV and had no source of income after the deaths of their husbands) from the village with the goal to pray to God for the solutions to their problems. These issues included poverty, the education of their orphaned children, hunger, healthcare (including malaria, typhoid, diarrhea, jigger infestation, and HIV) and being taken advantage of by “wife inheritors”. They also studied God’s word together on a weely basis. The team started the 1st Orphans and Widows Christmas celebration to put smiles on the orphans faces by providing them with food and giving out clothes/shoes. A chance was given to them to sing, recite memory verses, perform drama/skits and tell about the meaning of the birth of Jesus Christ. Pastors from different churches were also invited to pray for the orphans and widows and urged that it is the role of the church to take care of orphans and widows as it is stated in “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”. James 1:27(NIV).
On 15th February 2011, Judith, Josiah, and the prayer team of widows jumped out in faith and started 2 feeding programs at 2 Primary Schools (Ajigo Primary school and Barchando Primary School).The orphans of Barchando primary School would walk for about 3 miles to come for lunch at the house of our late mother/mother in law, Mama Selina. This home later became the home/school/orphanage of Children of Purpose. The sole purpose of the 2 feeding programs was to provide hungry orphans with hot lunches (beans and maize, vegetable and maize-meal). The program further helped the widows to cook, feed the children. They also learned proper hygiene and nutrition, thus reducing diseases and death. The widow cooked lunches purchased with donations for 101 orphans each day. The same year 2011, the women registered Women of Purpose Community development Centre (WOPCDC) with the government of Kenya as a self-Help group. This gave the women a bigger platform to expand their services in the community e.g., planting of trees, visiting different homes/schools to clean, treat children infected by jiggers which was rampant then and to create awareness on hygiene and healthy living. They also helped build temporary houses to their fellow widows, visited the sick in hospitals and visited their fellow women in prisons as they continued to feed the children, pray and study God’s word.
In February 2013, Judith, her husband and the women prayerfully opened Mama Selina Children of Purpose Early Childhood Education Centre (as it was known then) at the home of Josiah’s late mother. Since then, the school/ orphanage has grown. The team wanted to have a safe, conducive place where they could teach these children God’s word, meet their basic needs and identify each individual’s talent at an early age and closely monitor their progress holistically as well as reduce their suffering.
In December 2014, 14 children graduated from Pre-school to start Standard (grade) 1, which has moved steadily to grade 7 to date (2021/2022), and thus saw the birth of Children of Purpose Education Centre (COPEC) which was registered by Ministry of Education in 2021. Among our children are those with special needs such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, the partially deaf, and ADHD. Our numbers continued to grow to over 200 students.
In March 2020, the government closed all schools to reduce the spread of Covid-19 and Children of Purpose was not spared. The school administration organized to have fewer children come to the Centre to be taught God’s word, be fed and be released back to their homes. The total population of our children is at now 90, ranging from Pre-school to grade 7, and also 35 students in High school who are under our supportive care financially and spiritually. When the pandemic clears, we anticipate significant growth to return to caring for more of our orphan population over the next years as God provides provisions.
