Finn and Ella Addy – two kids from Halfmoon Bay – are doing their part to raise money for Isichi, an impoverished child in Kenya, and his grandmother Mama Henrietta, by selling potted plants.
Their last sale of the year is on Sept. 6 at the Roberts Creek Sunday Market.
Finn and Ella’s grandmother, Jackie Stach, has been coordinating their efforts through Isichi’s teacher Ben Alumasa at Isicheno Primary School in Isicheno, Kenya.
“It’s been really good for the kids because they’re learning about the bigger world, and about helping people who have it a lot harder than they do,” Stach said.
The Stach family has been involved with Isichi and Mama Henrietta for a few years. Stach first came into contact with them through an African singing group she was involved with. The singing group tried implementing a self-sustaining economy for Mama Henrietta when they found out that she was barely supporting herself and Isichi, as well as numerous relatives living with them rent-free.
The singing group purchased 60 chicks for Mama Henrietta, and arranged for someone from a group called Tembo Kenya to teach Mama Henrietta and the other women in the house how to raise the chicks into chickens. Their hope was that Mama Henrietta could sell the eggs in a store the group had set up for her.
But it didn’t go so well.
“Someone came and stole the chickens,” Stach said. “So everything just went bad.”
They tried other projects as well, but the end result was always the same.
“They’re so poor in the village, there was so much theft. Nothing worked out,” Stach said. “So we dropped that as a cause because it just wasn’t working.”
The Stach family began sending moneygrams to Alumasa so he could buy food and clothes as well as school supplies for Isichi and Mama Henrietta. They also paid for Isichi’s tuition. It worked out to about $50 a year for them.
But costs kept adding up. Stach said that Isichi was getting so hungry at school he was leaving halfway through the day. So they arranged for him to eat lunches with the children in Grade 8 – which is the last year of school at Isicheno Primary.
The Grade 8 students are around 17 years old, while Isichi is 10. According to Stach, the Grade 8s are the only school children who are fed by the school because they want them to graduate.
The Stach family had been paying for Isichi’s costs out of pocket. It wasn’t prohibitively expensive for them, but one day Stach realized something.
“This is going to go on forever,” Stach said. “We have to support this guy until who knows when? There’s no end to this, so we need to figure out a way that we can make it work.”
Their solution was to pot small succulent plants and mosses and sell them to raise money for Isischi. Stach said that they’ve made $600 since last spring.
Stach recently sent $200 to Alumasa for Isichi. According to Stach, this is enough for their evening meal and his lunch meal for the next couple of months. She said they have to dole out the money in small amounts because of the risk that their food will be stolen.
“It makes me very happy to help Isichi go to school every day and to know that Isichi and his grandmother have enough to eat,” Finn said.
