When her husband died of cancer in December 2001, Kate Fletcher found herself faced with the question that is common among the widowed: "What do I do with the rest of my life?"

After about a year of soul searching, Fletcher decided to travel to Nairobi, Kenya, to work with orphaned and abandoned children who are HIV-infected.

After nine months at the Nyumbani Hospice/Orphanage in Nairobi, Fletcher returned to her rented home in Mt. Lebanon, gave up the lease and gave away most of her possessions so that she could move to Kenya permanently.

Fletcher, 67, was a teacher and later worked in health care. Her late husband, Leonard Fletcher, was a dentist in Castle Shannon.

Though she and her husband had been involved in local mission work as longtime members of St. Thomas More Church in Bethel Park, picking up and moving to Africa was a dramatic decision and one that made some family members question her sanity.

But to Fletcher, it made perfect sense.

"It had always been in the back of my mind to do something about all of the children who are orphaned by AIDS in Africa," Fletcher said.

She said she always had a soft spot in her heart for orphans after spending several years in an orphanage outside of Philadelphia as a child when her family fell on hard times.

Fletcher found out about the orphanage during an Internet search and e-mailed its founder, the Rev. Angelo D'Agostino, a Jesuit priest, with her offer to volunteer.

In Kenya, she saw firsthand the tremendous need among the children and families affected by AIDS. But she was surprised that, instead of being a horribly sad place, she found Nyumbani to be a place of hope.

"It was full of life. The kids, they are absolutely wonderful. You can't not love them. They run. They jump. They play. When visitors come, they run up to them and hug them," Fletcher said. "They are just so full of life."

Fletcher said that, with the help of anti-retroviral medications, the children are able to live relatively normal lives, and that the death rate had slowed. When Nyumbani opened in 1992, she said, there were four or five deaths a month. Now, there are not that many in a year.

Last summer, when Fletcher came home to the United States to visit relatives and to prepare for her permanent move to Africa, she raised $30,000 by speaking at local churches about her work.

She moved to Nairobi in September 2004 to work as a teacher at the Nyumbani home and took the money with her to help the AIDS orphans.

This summer, she's back again, raising money to start her own project.

Fletcher recently decided to open a home for orphaned girls who are not HIV-infected.

She said she came up with the idea after noticing that there seemed to be a number of programs for HIV-infected orphans, but not many for those who were not infected. Many of the healthier orphans live either on the streets or with extended families, Fletcher said.

Called Hekima Place, Fletcher's home will open this month with 10 girls who will live in a cottage supervised by a house mother, whom Fletcher recently hired and plans to pay with the proceeds from her Social Security check.

She chose the name Hekima because it means "wisdom" in Arabic.

While the girls are being screened for admittance to her home, Fletcher is busy raising money to expand the home to serve 60 girls and to educate them from elementary through high school.

After pitches at St. Thomas More and St. Louise de Marillac churches, she'd raised about $45,000. That will cover the living expenses of the first 20 girls and their tuition at a private school several miles from the compound where they will live.

She's looking for permission to speak at other Catholic churches, and when she returns to Nairobi in early September, Fletcher hopes to have another $25,000, $15,000 to install a waterline at the housing compound and $10,000 for a used van to transport the girls to medical and other appointments. The girls will walk the several miles to and from school each day.

The school where Fletcher plans to send the girls is operated by a local minister and his wife and was the only school willing to accept the HIV-infected children from the Nyumbani home before they were admitted to public school. Nyumbani founder D'Agostino had to fight the government to get his children admitted to public schools, Fletcher said.

Kathy English, of Upper St. Clair, is serving as treasurer of Hekima Place Inc., the nonprofit fund-raising organization Fletcher has created. English met Fletcher 15 years ago when the two served on the St. Thomas More parish council.

English said that, in addition to speaking at churches, Fletcher is contacting foundations and businesses for financial support. She's also setting up a system through which donors can support a child for $30 a month.

The Rev. Kenneth White, pastor of St. Thomas More, said Fletcher was busy getting Kenyan citizens on her board of directors to make sure that her boarding home exists well into the future. "She knows she is likely not going to be doing this for the next 25 years," he said. "She wants to make sure the work is carried on."

White said he was somewhat surprised that Fletcher took on such a daunting task at a this point in her life.

But, "she can see that doing this is going to make a huge difference to these kids," White said.

Fletcher said she knew that keeping her boarding facility operating will require endless fund-raising, and even then, that she's meeting only a tiny part of the immense need among the orphans in Africa.

"It's totally overwhelming -- the numbers of people in Africa who need help. If you look at the big problem, you get paralyzed, and then that does nothing for anyone," Fletcher said.

But this is how she plans to spend the rest of her healthy days. Africa, she said, is now home to her.

"As long as I can help, I am going to stay there," Fletcher said. "I've told my family, if I die there, let me be buried there."

Donations to Hekima Place can be sent c/o Kathy English, 3304 Brookdale Drive, Pittsburgh 15241.