Happy House
Sue Hayward turned her back on the world of business to start a family and, 16 months later, she has 50 children calling her Mama!
Sue a former Blackpool hotelier, is the driving force behind Children of Watamu, the charity she founded which is saving and transforming lives of vulnerable children in Kenya.
Orphaned, abandoned, neglected and abused children, aged from a few weeks to 14, now have home, safety, love, family and respect at Sue’s Happy House Children’s Home in Watamu.
Thrown out with the rubbish
Eight weeks premature and weighing just over a kilo, newborn baby Harry was left fighting for life after being dumped on a rubbish tip in the busy town of Malindi.
The newborn, wrapped in a plastic bag ,the umbilical cord and placenta still attached, was close to death when he was found by a passerby who took him to hospital.
One in June, he now has a home for life at the Happy House which opened in March last year.
Alerted to Harry’s plight by the Children’s Office, Sue offered to pay to meet all the costs of medicine and to provide milk, clothes, nappies and visits for the entire time he was in hospital.
With the whole Happy House family willing him to live, there was great rejoicing when, eight weeks later, he was well enough to go home to the Happy House, where he now has 49 “brothers and sisters“!
Sue, 61, and her husband, Dave, 68, leased out their hotel in Blackpool to move to Kenya so Sue, Mama Sue to everyone, oversees the Happy House.
Local women are trained as house mums and aunties, there’s full-time social worker plus two admin staff, four teachers, a cook, ancillary cleaning and gardening staff to look after the children, house, nursery school and four-acre plot.
It’s been a tough road for Sue who, despite some prolonged periods of ill-health, has never lost sight of her vision continuing to work long hours to raise the £250,000 needed to complete the project which she is ensuring will become a flagship for residential childcare in Kenya.
Raising money to keep the Happy House running is a tall order for a small charity and its child sponsorship is crucial.
By contributing £20 a month they are helping to secure a future for their sponsor child and have the chance to forge a real bond with their child – via emails, photographs and if they wish, visits. “Our sponsors are very much a part of our family, “ said Sue “our children have no, or few, relatives and it is lovely for them to grow up knowing that someone, beyond their family at the Happy House, loves and cares for them.
“Every penny raised goes directly to caring for our children, only those employed at the Happy House are paid,” she added.
In January, Sue opened a nursery school at the Happy House, introducing British teaching methods to Kenyan teachers. The children are flying, soaking up knowledge like little sponges, and doing so well that adding primary classes is next on the agenda – and an appeal to raise £75,000 has just been launched.
Once in profit, the school, which is also taking children of local business people as fee paying pupils, will bring in children from the local community, denied “free” state education because their parents are too poor to afford the required books, shoes and uniform, and will give them free schooling – providing all uniform books etc, and meals, to give them a head start in life.
“If a child can read, a child can learn,” said Sue “education is the only road out of poverty.”
Spearheading the charity in the UK is Elizabeth Gomm.
Sue said: “My friend Elizabeth, who sponsors Pendo, is a trustee and looks after everything in the UK for us. She took a real leap of faith by giving up her job as a journalist to work for us … entirely voluntarily.”
In eleven years Sue’s charity had already built 3 schools in Kenya, putting 700 children in education before embarking on the Happy House.
