Featured Program:
Learn about Children First, COCI's support of orphans and poverty stricken children in Kenya.
Featured Fundraising:
Sedona Marathon
February 9, 2008
Sedona, CA
WHAT WILL WE TELL OUR CHILDREN?
By Victor Odongo
What will we tell our children?
Will we tell them that the democracy that we nurtured for 45 years;
The democracy that we so loved that we went sovereign,
We conspired, rigged ourselves in and killed it,
We not only killed it but also buried it with a lot of impunity;
Will we have the guts to tell our children that we are looters?
That we looted our beautiful country and promoted lawlessness;
Will we have the guts to inform them that we are tribalist?
That we view our neighbour with scorn because they belong to another tribe;
What will we tell our children?
Will we tell them that we value our tribe more than the nation;
That the slogan ‘Justice be our Shield and Defender’ in our national anthem is just but a farce;
How tall can we stand to tell our children our true colour?
The colourless colour, a mixture of hatred and mistrust that is burning within us;
For today, we saw the sun rise east, and hope it shall set west;
Our posterity watching our moves keenly;
The brighter future which has been elusive, still remaining a dream to be pursued;
Only Peace, Love and unity bind us together
For we need the guts and morals to tell our children
The history of our beautiful country;
If we DON’t
What will we tell our children?
Victor Odongo is the son of Children First’s Founder and Director Joyce Odongo.
Victor has volunteered his time and talents on a full time basis since the inception of the Children First Organization.
During this time of turmoil in Kenya as a result of the recent elections, Victor has been a constant source of information on the safety and well being of Children First’s staff and the children under its care.
The poem, What Will We Tell Our Children, expresses his commitment to Kenya, to Kenyan children and to the vulnerable children served by Cherish Our Children International’s program Children First in Kisumu, Kenya
One of my personal intentional life goals has been to value children. Early in my life I was touched by the sad fact that children are so often not valued and are thrown by the wayside on the journey to making money, obtaining power and furthering individual goals.
I have intentionally raised two sons that value life, family and the world community and I have worked in my own profession as a pediatric nurse to further my commitment to children.
When I came to a place in my life when my sons were grown and my parents had passed I knew I had come to the time that I could expand my mission. I picked a place to start where my power of voice and economic ability could make a difference in a child’s life that had no voice or economic strength. This lead me to Children First in Kisumu, Kenya and then on to becoming a Board of Directors member of COCI.
Through my work with COCI/CF I not only have been given the opportunity of continuing my own life’s goals but have been able to touch those around me with the opportunity to help vulnerable children throughout the world.
If I can assist in making a handful of children become healthy, educated and caring adults to go on to assist their own children to become the same kind of adult, then I believe I have been able to meet my life’s purpose in valuing and Cherishing Our Children.
by Rebecca Miller
I've been working with COCI since 1995. It started out as a glamorous endeavor. I hob-knobbed with royalty and threw a fabulous (zero budget) black tie party at The Ritz Atlanta that raised a lot of money. Given it was my first fundraising event (even as a guest!) I wanted to know where the money was going.
On January 4, 1996 I took a break from my corporate life and after a 40 hour journey from Atlanta, ended up in Constanta, Romania where it was 10 below zero and the city was covered in inches of ice. This seaport village had the highest population of Pediatric HIV+ cases in Europe, and astounding numbers of institutionalized and homeless (street) children. In Constanta, I bore witness to unspeakable tragedies. I was immersed in the suffering of abandoned and unwanted children and babies.They were in deplorable conditions, and they were everywhere... hospitals, institutions, on the street, in the sewers, even stealing my video camera. My "glamorous" home life became an absurd place a million miles away. Alone, I faced survival on a raw and primal level and I experienced first hand a world I never imagined existed. It was during this trip that my life stopped making sense.
In the midst of this dark,tragic and surreal experience, I found an oasis. Casa Speranta (House of Hope). A tiny home run by an incredible woman from Texas where 20 abandoned HIV+ children were living in a family environment. These children were loved, honored, nurtured, educated and protected... they were living a life of dignity. It was there that I met Alexandru, Claudiu, Ilinca, Marius, Emi, Costel, Elena, Adi, Marianna, Alexandra, Loredana, Tavi, Ionel, Tita, Nela, Georgi, Nurgi, Madalina and the other Madalina and baby Christina. It was there that I saw the possibility of hope. For the hundreds of thousands of children in this horrific "system", there were viable alternatives of care. At the time, AIDS meds were virtually unavailable,no one expected these children to live more than a few years so there was no plan for the future. Over the course of the next few years, I went back to Romania several (14) times. In 1997, I was honored to become the President and CEO of COCI and formed a partnership with Casa Speranta. Together we strengthened the program so that it became a replicable model. Wegot involved with many other programs in the country and worked with the ever changing government officials to form and shape public policy on child protection and de-institutionalization initiatives. In 2000, COCI brought the family-style care model to the Nyalenda slums in Kisumu, Kenya. With a local counterpart, Children First,we are now supporting and educating 150 orphans who have lost their parents to AIDS... and through agricultural programs this project is on the road to being self-sustaining and is reproducible.
Over time we were able to get anti-retroviral support to the children of Casa Speranta (and thousands of other HIV+ children). We faced enormous obstacles, and it was a huge victory in the end....and yet,we were too late. We were too late for Alexandru (Buddha boy), Claudiu, Ilinca, Madalina, Georgi, Costel, Marius and countless others... I will always love these children who "didn't matter.” They are my fuel, and I won't stop, I can't stop,working on their behalf until we have ended the suffering of children.
COCI is a small organization doing really big things in some of the world’s most challenged arenas. We are making a difference in the lives of young people who would otherwise be completely forgotten. We are giving them a brighter future,one child at a time... and they all really matter. Thank you for the contribution you have made to these children, and continue to make for the future of our world.
