Hello close friends and family,

I hope this message finds all of you healthy and happy. As most of you know, I spent time in east Africa for 2 months, from June 24 this year, and visited Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. During my time in this part of the world I saw living conditions that I had never before seen in my life. I found the people in most of these parts to have incredible strength and resilience. To be totally honest, I did not find any one person lacking in optimism and hope for their future. All welcomed me with more warmth than I could ever have wished for.

One very special experience I had in Kenya was when I visited Kitui - the home county of a friend named John Mutuku. This is a semi-arid area in which the only water supply is several kilometres away from the settlements. The people of these settlements have no access to vehicles; they rely on donkeys to transport caddies of water from the river up a very long hill to their homes. The water is not clean. It is common for the people here to spend a day without water and maybe two or three without eating.

With John and my Rwandan friend, Shimwa Emma, who hosted me for the two months I spent in Africa, I visited a number of schools in this region. Matulani Primary School in Nthongoni Location, Lower Yatta Sub County of Kitui was one particular school that affected me so much. It is a boarding school which accommodates students of primary school age up to standard 7 and 8 (around 14-15 years old). The bedroom here was simply a shack with a few extremely thin, worn out, old and dirty foam mattresses thrown on the floor around the room. There was no glass pane in an empty window-frame, which allowed a snake to enter the bedroom and attack one of the girls during her sleep. I promised myself I would not forget about this terrible living condition for these students and I would make efforts to improve it. I have attached below some pictures of this situation. Please forgive the poor quality of such, I had been using a very cheap low-pixel camera and I just took photos of photos with my IPad to use for this email.

The bedroom:

The window without glass:

The bedroom :

The children:

I have done some research and I have found a mattress company in Nairobi to provide these items at wholesale price. There are 80 students in need of a mattress at this school, so to supply each one with a mattress will cost around 75,000 Kenyan Shillings - the equivalent of 700 US dollars or 540 pounds. Between a friend here and myself we will be contributing 250 US dollars (195 pounds), which means I am hoping to raise the remaining 450 US dollars (350 pounds). If I am able to raise this money, John Mutuku has promised to buy the bed frames for each of the mattresses.

Once the money for these mattresses has been raised, my close and trusted friend Shimwa Emma will be purchasing them from the Kenyan home-ware store. John Mutuku will be organizing transport and delivery of the mattresses and will provide proof of the same.

I am asking for your support for my plan here, if it is possible for any of you to contribute some money to this cause I will be extremely grateful and will not forget your efforts. I have created a crowdfunding page with JustGiving to promote this project and collect contributions from willing people online. To collect the contributions I have opened a unique “mattresses” account with PayPal, so the money will not get confused with any other funds. If you would like to contribute, you can send money via this page.

I will follow up with an email including images from the crowdfunding page to update fundraising progress and of course I will be reporting on the final result of this project.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read about my news!!

Lots of love to you all and I hope to see you all soon!!

Ellie xxxxx