Serenje Orphans Children's Home in Zambia

The St Andrews Rotary Club welcomed local resident Kevin Gilbert as its speaker. Some images are so powerful as to be life-changing and this was the case for Kevin soon after he arrived in Zambia in 2002, having volunteered his services for 2 years as an experienced teacher. HIV had had a devastating effect on the country, leaving many children as orphans, and Kevin was haunted by the sight of a baby boy, crying in the dust, with a frail grandmother. Together with a local man he resolved to set up an orphanage, for which Kevin committed to finding the funds although he had no clear idea at the time as to how he could do that. An appeal to his own family and close friends was a successful start and they soon had a building, from locally made bricks, in the bush housing 20 happy children. Support from Australia, where Kevin taught previously, later enabled the building of a 100 bed dormitory.

Another powerful image, this time of street children in the local township, convinced Kevin, just before his teaching assignment in Zambia ended, of the need for a town orphanage to complement the rural one. Once again, the question was how to fund it? This time the answer came from some of the pupils and staff at his next posting, an international school in Rome. Fund-raisers included a locked-in night in the school, sleeping on the floor and eating a typical Zambian meal of beans and rice. The links with this school and later with one in Geneva where Kevin taught before retirement each continue to provide one-third of the £23,000 which, remarkably, suffices as the annual budget.  Moreover, the orphanage is now able to raise the balance itself, through the income from a Guest House – the idea of one of Kevin’s pupils – and from maize-grinding. The orphanage is not itself a school but is enabling the children to proceed to secondary and in some cases to tertiary education, thereby giving them extra life chances.

In his vote of thanks John Black, who had himself had an involvement with orphanages in Zimbabwe, commended Kevin for the way in which he had worked in partnership with the local community.