When Jenny Faries needed help raising money for needy children in Kenya, she turned to someone in her family with a talent for business ? her grandmother Bea Faries.

Mrs. Faries has been known locally as the Tupperware Queen and one year sold more Tupperware than anyone in the United States.

She and Miss Faries are now fundraising to buy sneakers and school textbooks for children at the Filadelfia School in Nakuru, Kenya. The Filadelfia School is a free school and orphanage run by a Christian mission based in Denmark. Many of the students are living on the edge, usually with only one family member.

?My professor showed us a documentary about street kids in Nairobi,? Miss Faries said. ?This guy went there and was working in an orphanage. He decided to go out and live on the streets in Nairobi in the biggest slum called Kibera.

?I was just amazed. The kids spend all day sniffing glue to take away the pain of hunger. Many of them are orphans because their parents have died from AIDS.

?They are dirty and horrible-looking so tourists don?t like to see them. Nobody wants them. The documentary was heartbreaking. They are little kids. They are on the street and they have nobody to care for them or feed them. That is what inspired me to go to Kenya.?

Miss Faries taught English at the Filadelfia School for several months.

?They have slums there, and I was pretty much living in the bad area,? she said. ?One day our housegirl told us that when she left the night before, at 8 p.m. a guy came up to her and grabbed her shirt and pulled her into an alley.

?She slapped him and got away. You couldn?t go out at night at all. When I came home to Bermuda, I was so happy to be able to go out at 6 p.m. if I wanted.?

The first language at Filadelfia school was KiSwahili. There were only five English text books to be shared by one class, and Miss Faries said the text books themselves were terrible.

?The English is so bad in the books,? she said. ?The teachers don?t know English very well. I shared a classroom with three classes in one small room.?

Miss Faries hopes that if she gets enough money to buy textbooks, she can also influence the school to buy the right textbooks.

When she returned to Bermuda, she wrote to the Filadelfia School and asked what she could do to help the children there.

?She was told that many of the children do not have any shoes, or their shoes are very poor. It would take $3,000 to put sneakers on the feet of every orphan. A pair of sneakers costs around $4.

?When I was teaching, I took my children outside to play football,? she said. ?They don?t wear sneakers but what they call dress shoes. One girl was wearing these platform shoes that she thought were very nice. When she went to kick the ball her shoes simply fell apart.

?She was very upset. She said, ?those were my only shoes?. She took me to visit her house. To get to her house we had to walk across town and across a dump.

?She lived in one room with her mother. Her mom doesn?t work and they have rent that is piling up. Her mom will end up working to pay off debt for the rest of their life. The school is free. She was thinking of dropping out of school to go and work as a housegirl.?

She said wearing their shoes would improve their health, and it would also stop them from breaking or injuring their feet while playing games like football.

?My son said kids outgrow sneakers, but at least they can pass them down if they are in an orphanage,? Mrs. Faries said. ?Some of the students are also looking for someone to sponsor their further education. A student there could be sent to a private school for $300. If we could sponsor one child a year, that is one child who maybe won?t fall through the cracks. With better schooling, maybe that child could help the other children.?

Mrs. Faries is a member of the Altrusa Club. After Miss Faries gave a talk there about the children in Kenya they agreed to help her.

?Altrusa has been very instrumental,? said Mrs. Faries. ?Jenny did a slideshow for us, and showed different things. She showed us the pretty parts of Kenya and the nasty parts as well. That inspired me to help out. Some of the members are trying to collect money for us. They even took a sneaker and a flyer when they went to a concert in New Hampshire last week. They raised $144. They tied a dollar bill to a sneaker and people were putting money into the sneaker, to try and raise some money.?

However Mrs. Faries and her granddaughter do not want donations of actual sneakers, because they would be too expensive to send overseas.

?So many people are very sympathetic and the first thing they want is to give you sneakers,? said Mrs. Faries. ?But the money would go further if we sent it to Kenya.?

One day Mrs. Faries was at a senior citizens tea, when the idea suddenly came over her that she should ask her friends at the tea for help.

?So I got up and I told the people there,? she said. ?They were all seniors. I told everybody ?Just remember that if you give me $2 you buy one shoe, and if you give me $4 it will give me one pair?.

?So many times we spend $4 on something really silly, whereas these children need a pair to keep their feet healthy. They don?t have them.

?I raised $200 that day. Nobody knew I was going to ask for it. It goes to show that people do have a heart and they are willing to help.?

@EDITRULE: