hen Bermudian Jenny Faries contacted the Bata shoe company earlier this year and told them she wanted 500 pairs of children?s sneakers they thought she was a prankster.

For the last couple of months, Miss Faries has been raising money in Bermuda to buy sneakers for school 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.

With the help of the Altrusa Club, Miss Faries has raised $4,000, a sum that buys a lot of sneakers in Kenya.

?I didn?t really expect to get shoes for the entire school,? she said. ?It was such a hard job to get them organised. Doing it from here I was a little worried that the funds would go astray. So I tried organising it directly with Bata. That didn?t work because they wouldn?t reply to me. I think they thought I didn?t really have any money and was just kidding.?

So Miss Faries decided to trust the school itself. She got to know teachers and students at the school a year ago when she did volunteer teaching there.

?I sent them the money and they organised the shoe purchases and sent me pictures of the children with the shoes. Bata gave them a discount and they have money left over. Now they want to know what to do with the leftover money.?

Miss Faries said the extra money might go to textbooks, scholarships, or perhaps shoes for the next class of students.

?The school wanted to buy black school dress shoes,? said Miss Faries. ?I said ?no?, because the whole point was so they could play and run and not be barefoot. If they are going to have one pair of shoes they might as well have sneakers. They walk long distances home. It?s not like here where parents pick their children up after school.?

When Miss Faries taught at the school she noticed that many of the children played in barefeet or threadbare flipflops. Some of them had heavy black dress shoes to wear to school.

One day while playing football with the children, one child?s shoes fell completely apart.

The little girl became very upset, because the ragged flipflops were her only shoes.

It was then that Miss Faries decided the kids needed some good old-fashioned sneakers.

In an email, a missionary who works at the school, Lief Madsen, told how happy the children are about their new sneakers.

?We were very surprised and happy to hear the plans Jenny had to raise money for shoes for our children in Nakuru,? he said.

?They are all very poor, and many of them are orphans without much hope for the future.

?But that is what we are trying to give them for the future, and we realise that every step to help them with something in their lives is giving them new hope.?

Mr. Madsen said that it was hard enough to put regular school shoes on the children.

Until now, sneakers were just a luxurious dream.

?It means a lot for the children that they can play and do sports activities in real sport shoes, and they do not need to wear the black school shoes all the time,? he said.

?They were happy and proud of being able to wear those sports shoes, that they have never been able to do before.?

Mr. Madsen and his wife Susanne have been working with street children since 1996, together with the Filadelfia Church in Langag Langa, Nakuru.

?We started taking care of only 40 to 50 children who got food and basic school teaching,? he said. ?Today it is a programme sponsoring 700 children to go to school and get food. Eighty children who stay at the home are provided with everything they need in their lives.

?All this is only possible because of wellwishers in different places in the world, who like to help to do a difference in the world, and specially for the children.?

Mr. Madsen thanked everyone who helped to make their work in Kenya possible.

?By working together we are giving hope and future to many children and young people,? he said.

@EDITRULE:

Those wishing to help with the sneaker and text book fund can make cheques payable to Jenny Faries, c/o Altrusa Inc. of Bermuda, PO Box DV760, Devonshire DVBX.