Woman’s quest for community work gives hope to abandoned babies and abused girls

When she quit her well-paying job in Nairobi to do community work in Meru, she planned to do the volunteer work for about two years.

What she did not know then was that 14 years later she would still be in the county rescuing abandoned babies and abused children, especially girls.

Mrs Mercy Chidi Baidoo is the founder and director of Ripples International, an institution that rescues abandoned babies.

The organisation also helps girls at the risk of, or who have undergone sexual abuse.

The centre is in Kithoka, Meru County.

“My day starts very early, sometimes as early at 5am,” she said during an interview at a hotel in Meru.

“I used to work with the Catholic Rescue Service which I left in 2001 to create awareness on HIV/AIDS in Meru.

“I realised that my county recorded high HIV prevalence but very little was being done as most organisations concentrated in the western region,” narrated Mrs Baidoo.

Her intention was to create awareness, but as she says, one thing led to another and she ended up establishing the centre.

First she went round teaching locals about HIV/Aids, then she set up a voluntary counselling and testing centre.

FORMED SUPPORT GROUPS

“I had to form support groups for those who tested positive and help them get through life.

“The ones who were not infected were also counselled because I believe there was a reason why they came for testing,” she said.

All this time she relied on funding from her family’s resources.
“Due to lack of adequate funds to meet the increasing demand, I decided to focus on the children in 2004. Everything I did from then was for the benefit of the child,” said Mrs Baidoo.

At that time, she had only two volunteers who were giving home-based care to the terminally ill.

Due to the challenges she faced, she lost up to 60 per cent of the victims who left behind infected children.

“Once their mothers passed on, the children were abandoned by relatives who did not see a reason to take care of them as they thought they would die anyway.

“I picked a set of twins whose mother was terminally ill and admitted to hospital. I took them to my home to take care of them. I picked another one and before I realised, I had five abandoned children living in my house. That is what gave birth to the Newstart Centre,” she adds.

She started taking abandoned children irrespective of their status despite the earlier intention to care of the infected ones.

Mrs Baidoo would take babies aged under one year and keep them for about three years as she looked for homes to place them or have them adopted through the adoption agencies.

“At the moment we have about 39 babies in the centre and about 160 have passed through our care,” said Mrs Baidoo.

She is in the process of registering her organisation as an adoption agency for the interest of the children.

A few years after she started, a girl who was being forced to go through female circumcision went to the rescue centre seeking accommodation.

TURNED BACK HOME

“The centre was just for babies and I could not take her. We took her through counselling and psycho-support before sending her back home as there was no place for her to stay,” Mrs Baidoo narrates with regret as she feels she could have averted what happened to the girl later.

She continues: “one day when I went for a conference in Nairobi I saw a girl come to me.

“She said she knew me and went ahead to introduce herself. She told me she ran away from home to Nairobi immediately after I had taken her back because the family insisted she undergoes FGM.

“In Nairobi she cohabited with a man, for lack of a better option, at Mukuru kwa Njenga. At 13, she was pregnant with the man’s child.”

The girl’s story really touched her and she saw it necessary to start a girls’ rescue centre.

Out of a broken heart, Tumaini Girls Rescue Centre was born in 2006.

True to its name, the centre gives hope to girls who feel their lives are hopeless after they are abused.

Here, they are given a reason to stay strong and follow their dreams.

“The centre rescues girls between three and 17 years who are at the risk of, or have faced abuse.

“Other than sexual violence, we rescue those forced to undergo FGM, forced marriages, physical abuse and child labour,” she said.

TEMPORARY RESCUE CENTRE

Tumaini Girls Rescue Centre was started as a temporary rescue home.

“It was meant to keep the girls for just about 6 weeks as we counselled them and gave medical services.

“However, this has not been the case because some are abused by family members and we cannot risk taking them back there. Some end up in the centre for years,” said Mrs Baidoo.

The centre is now home to about 300 girls.

The centre also seeks legal redress on behalf of the girls to ensure the perpetrators face the law.

“I have a girl aged three who we rescued after being defiled by her father. Most of the sexual violence cases we deal with involve family members from the fathers, uncles and even grandfathers who are left to care for these children,” recalls Mrs Baidoo.

Her greatest success in seeking justice for the abused girls was in May 2013 when she won a case against the police.

The case involved 160 girls who had sued the police for negligence in addressing their rape cases.

The police were ordered by the court to conduct prompt, effective, proper and professional investigations into each of the claimants’ cases and to take measures to improve its response in all cases of defilement.

MADE HEADLINES

This story made headlines even in international media as it ensured justice for the girls.

Due to stigma and discrimination in local schools, the centre found it hard to place the children in those learning institutions.

“We were often turned away by some schools which refused to admit our infected children. Some of the girls we rescued were already pregnant and therefore continuing with school at that time became hard,” explained Mrs Baidoo.

The hustles of finding suitable schools for the rescued babies and girls resulted in the opening of an education centre.

“We built the Ripple school where we take the children. We have kindergarten and classes one to three.

“The older girls are taught at their individual level because they vary in their needs.

“Each student is attended to by one teacher and taught at their various levels.

“However for candidates and pre-candidates, we place them in boarding schools for better performance,” she said.

The centre which started with only two volunteers now has a staff of about 80 employees.

“We have 15 nannies who take care of the abandoned babies,” said Mrs Baidoo who explains that sometimes they just find the babies left at their gate by unknown persons.

“Since we handle babies and abused girls, we realised we needed efficient and accessible healthcare and that is when we set up the Ripples Medical Centre,” she added.

“We refer our girls to Nairobi Women’s Hospital when they need specialised treatment like surgeries but most cases are handled here.”

The medical centre was set at Makutano to also serve the community and generate some income to run the rescue centre.

EMPOWER CAREGIVERS

Because the centre cannot accommodate so many children at a go, those referred back to their homes are still taken care of by the centre.

“We look for alternative settlement for the children, for instance, with willing aunts or grandmothers.

“We empower these caregivers economically by giving them money for businesses, seeds and animals for farmers, so that they can care for the children,” she explained.

At the moment, the centre supports about 8,000 students in various institutions.

She is working to expand the centre to other neighbouring counties like Tharaka-Nithi and Samburu.

Isiolo County is already on board.

A mother of four, three her own and one adopted, she is happy to be the mother of many other babies and girls who look up to her as their only hope.

“I hope to one day shut Tumaini Rescue Centre and return the girls to a safe community.

“It is sad that we are hiding girls here because their homes are unsafe for them.

“Hopefully at some point, homes will not be a danger to make girls leave them in search for safer places,” she concluded.