It was in the year 2002 when we had Boston Marathon in USA and Kenyans participated. One of the Kenyans emerged as the winner and he was given a medal. The whole Kenyan country then broke into celebration as one of theirs had won the medal. It was during this time that Matopeni community members were planning to come up with programs that were to steer developments for the benefit of her residents.
The local community members then formed a Community Based Organization (C.B.O) which they named ‘Boston Self Help Group’. Among many other programs, the mandate of the group was to start a centre that was to provide basic education to poor children that could not afford paying higher school fees in private school. Then Boston Children Centre was born. As a first step and to symbolize the starting line of developments in Matopeni through provision of quality education to the less fortunate.
Boston Children Centre – including primary school and kindergarten – was started on 5th January 2002. At this time we had only a small, iron sheet primary school with few classes.
Major milestones in our history
- In 2005 the ‘Boston Self Help Group’ was registered under the serial number of 6310 and became a legally constituted C.B.O that continues to operate the Boston Children Centre under the corresponding laws and regulations, supervised by the Ministry of Gender, Sports, Social and Cultural Laws of the Government of Kenya.
- In February 2008 new buildings for primary school students and kindergarten kids were built and opened six months later giving the needy children another chance of learning in a well-built permanent school.
- Rescue home was opened in 2009 and accommodates 20 orphans now. More about the Rescue home.
- We started farming in 2010 when we got some funds from a local bank to fence the garden against goats of the community members that could eat up the plants. More about our farming.
- On 4 January 2012 the high school was officially opened to enable poor and orphaned children residing in Matopeni slum and its environs to have access to quality secondary school education.
- In 2014 the new building of the Rescue home (on the top of Kindergarten) was built that made our rescue home kids to live in a nice and comfortable environment, but on the other hand it also helped us to reduce the operational costs as we no longer need to pay rent for the rescue home. Kids moved to the new building in January 2015.