We help children who have few opportunities. Yet simply removing them from a hopeless situation is not enough – we take our task of raising these children seriously.
We’ve formulated a number of basic rules for ourselves:
- It is best for a child to grow up in a family situation. We only accept a child if, after thorough investigation, we discover that this is virtually impossible with family or friends. Despite the care we offer, growing up in an orphanage is a last resort.
- We consider the individual development of every child very important. Even if the children can never be given as much attention as in a regular family, we do all we can to help every child to develop his or her individual talents. This is also why we can take a limited group of a maximum 56 children.
- We do as much as we can to ensure that the children grow up with Kenyan culture and Kenyan norms and values. They attend a regular school outside of the orphanage, are part of sporting clubs and, where possible, visit family members during the holidays. Furthermore, religion plays an important part in Kenyan society; therefore the children go to church weekly, despite Macheo not having been established based on a specific religious background.
- We develop projects to generate income in order to become less dependent on sponsors (in the Netherlands). Another result of these projects is that children also see that the opportunities they are given from Macheo are not simply a matter of course, but that the staff members work really hard for them.