Twenty years ago the Happy Life Mission started with four children being rescued in the suburb of Kasarani in Nairobi. Twenty years later we joined in with the 164 current kids at the two campuses, staff and two of the founders Peter and Faith to celebrate two decades of infant rescue and care. We met the amazing couple (now in their seventies) who first rented, and then virtually gave away the house they had in Roysambu where Happy Life Mission’s rescue centre and hospital are based – believing in the vision that Peter and Faith had about building a children’s home. The original name was Happy Life Children’s home and now Happy Life Mission as the program has encompassed several schools and two hospitals now. Our #bookstobooks project continues to support the education program.

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Steve, Leah, Sharon and Paul the Ambulance Driver in front of the new Faith Premier High School (the scond building has been completed this year)

The numbers behind Happy Life are quite staggering. A total of 956 abandoned babies have been rescued – with over four hundred and fifty going on to be adopted, three hundred being re-united with family members (like aunts, uncles, grandparents) and currently a bit over one hundred and sixty at the rescue centre (63) and the school campus at Juja Farm (101).

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The latest rescue is only a few days old and yet to be named

There was a lot of singing and dancing at the party with a mix of Swahili and English.

One of the partners of Happy Life is PAC University who very kindly hosted the party which was an excellent venue.

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Lunch was delicious with rice, chapatis, vegetables and salad accompanying the goat and chicken

This is our tenth year working with Happy Life – we missed one Christmas due to COVID – no access to Kenya was allowed – but we’ve made it here the other nine. One of the amazing things is seeing the kids grow up. One of the children close to our hearts is Beniah as his story is the introduction to our book ‘The Happy Life Story’. His story can be quite distressing so we’ve posted a separate short article (here).

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Benaiah was rescued in 2013
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Benaiah and Steve in 2017
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Benaiah and Steve Christmas 2022

That’s it for another year with these amazing children and we’re already looking forward to Christmas 2023 at Happy Life once again.

By day Steve Emecz works in digital transformation for Tungsten Network (a Kofax company) and in his spare time is co-founder of MX Publishing with his wife Sharon. MX Publishing is a social enterprise supporting several projects – About Us.

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