About Covenant Home

Covenant Home is a Christian based childrens home caring for approximately 178 children from deprived backgrounds. Many have come from the streets, have been abused, abandoned, or are brought in by relatives unable to care for the children properly; but at Covenant they have found a loving home atmosphere, a place to heal from the past, and an opportunity to gain a fresh start in life.

Our aim is to assist and care for needy children, to give them a home, an education, and a future in which they can become responsible people within the community, regardless of their past background.

The Home

Pat Botwright, founder and director of Covenant Home, first visited Kenya in 1990 as part of a team from England to visit missionaries based in Kisumu. She left Kenya with a vision to establish a home for street children and orphans. After two more visits, Pat sold her home and moved to Kenya; and in 1993 Covenant Home was founded with 4 orphans and 4 street children moving in with Pat in her small bungalow.

Today Pat's vision has become a reality for many more children, and Pat has a much larger family! Covenant is still very much run on a family style basis. 63 local people are employed to help with the running of the home, with preference often being given to widows or those in need. In recent years Covenant has grown so much and we are blessed enough to have had a purpose built self-contained site constructed to suit our needs, which was opened on 25th August 2000. It is able to house 126 children, plus the volunteers and live in staff. There is also a second site in the village in which the older boys can live, as they start further training and the move to independence.

Education

Covenant runs its own nursery and primary school, to which local children are also invited to attend. All education in Kenya needs to be paid for, so many who join our family have had no previous education, and need an environment that permits them to start schooling no matter what their age. When they are ready, children go on to outside schools, colleges and even university; or carry on with vocational training that suits their abilities. Many older children also seek the opportunity to go to bible college, either in Kisumu or abroad.

Our Successes

To date we have 53 in high schools, 2 in University and another waiting to join Uni in September to do a medical degree. A lot of our children have high academic ability and have topped the outside primary school some attended. For 7 years Covenant children have been the head boys, prefects,class monitors and games captains.

Grace Auma is working with the Off-Tu Mission in Uganda, an international youth ministry and her sister Liz Atiene is at Victory Bible College in Calgary. 6 older ones have graduated from Bible College and are in Ministry, mainly youth.

One of our older boys Wycliffe Omenda and his wife Lilian have started their own childrens home at Migai near the Tanzania Border and are caring for 21 orphans. He leased land to the Sony Sugar Company and with the monies received built the home. His sponsors and family have bought him 7 acres of land and he has been given the vision to build a School, Home and Church. Wycliffe was a top scripture Union leader and has trained 100 others for leadership, he is only 22 years old and has spent some of those on the street.