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About Grace Seneiya In 1984, Grace Seneiya, then an 11-year-old living in Maralal, Samburu District, rescued an infant who had been thrown into a rubbish pit. That was a time when the country was reeling under the effects of a severe drought and Seneiya thought that a desperate mother who could not feed the baby had abandoned him in a garbage pit to die. Seneiya wrapped the baby in her school sweater and took him to a nearby church where she handed him to nuns. Grace still recalls the day when her motorbike had a puncture as she rode through the rough Samburu terrain. She pushed the disabled machine towards a tree and found a weak 10-year-old blind child sitting under it. After fixing the puncture, Seneiya, by then a teacher and founder of the Maralal-based Grace’s Children Orphanage, took Saweina home to the center. Saweina was lucky. Many more disabled Samburu children are abandoned to die. Now in her third year of school, Saweina is learning Braille. So is Mitas Lenarmale, a 15-year-old boy who for six years had been tied to a goats’ shed at his parent’s home. Mitas survived the cruel treatment from his own family who had left him at the mercy of death. When Seneiya tracked him down, Mitas was unable to walk, talk, see or eat. As Seneiya puts it, “He had been isolated by his family because of his visual impairment which the Samburu believe is a curse.” In Samburu culture, any form of handicap or disability is associated with evil spirits or a curse from God and the child is severely punished by being alive or starved to death. In most cases the mother is also beaten. She initiated Grace’s Children Orphanage, as a response to these harsh realities that handicapped children face in Samburu. Born and raised in Samburu, she was determined to change the status quo and after her education she was posted to teach the visually impaired in the Samburu district. Initially she found 5 blind youths in the community who had been abandoned. She invited them to stay with her in her house and enrolled them in the local school she was teaching at, and while it was a struggle to make ends meet this was only the starting point. The foundation was formally established in 2001, and through writing several proposals Seneiya was able to get funding from the Japanese Embassy in Nairobi to put up two sleeping rooms for the disabled children whom she adopted. The Samburu town council was generous in giving the land, while the county council paid for the allocation fee. She has indeed come a long way from her initial efforts. She has put up centers for education and rehabilitation, eventually allowing the children to be placed into institutions of learning. She has partnered with the Ministry of Education to open several programs to support and increase the productivity of disabled people. She has expanded her program to accept women who are rejected by their families for giving birth to disabled children. “We still have a long way to go. With your help and support we hope to become truly self-sustainable and increase awareness across Kenya, ultimately changing the people’s attitude towards the handicapped children.” – Grace Seneiya 
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