More information More information on Hekima Place can be found at www.hekimaplace.org.

Since the summer of 2005, when former Mt. Lebanon resident Kate Fletcher decided to move to Africa and start a boarding school/orphanage outside of Nairobi, Kenya, for girls left orphaned by AIDS and other scourges, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has done occasional articles on her work and progress there.

Mrs. Fletcher, 69, a widow, started her home, called Hekima Place, with 10 girls two years ago. She now houses 43 girls ranging in age from 1 1/2 to 19 and she's hoping to expand to include more in the coming year.

Once again, in recent weeks, she has returned to the South Hills for her annual round of solicitations at area churches, including St. Louise De Marillac in Upper St. Clair and St. Thomas More and St. Valentine, in Bethel Park.

She said local churches and residents have been extremely generous in their monetary donations to her this summer and the previous two.

But, in addition, she said some local residents have been so moved by the story of Hekima Place that they have visited during the past year to offer their own time and energy to the girls there.

Here are the stories of a Mt. Lebanon college student, a Fox Chapel Family and a group of women from Upper St. Clair who visited Hekima Place in the past year:

USC contingent

Two Upper St. Clair sisters, Janet Hauge and Mary Julius, along with a former resident, Lauren Frank, spent five weeks at Hekima Place in March and April. The women planned the trip after Mrs. Hauge and Mrs. Julius heard Mrs. Fletcher speak at St. Thomas More Church last summer.

They invited Mrs. Fletcher to breakfast and were so impressed with her that they started to plan a visit to Hekima Place. Before they left they did some individual fundraising and were able to take a donation of about $12,000 with them.

Upon arrival in Kenya, the women were immediately taken by how loving the girls at Hekima Place are.

"It doesn't take even a day to fall in love with these girls," Mrs. Hauge said. "They have this glowing smile on their faces as if they are so happy that you are there, that there is another person in the world who cares about them."

The girls were on a holiday from school during the weeks the Upper St. Clair women were there so the visitors held daily classes and lessons to keep the girls sharp in their school skills. At the end of their visit, they held a competition, an academic Olympics of sorts, for the girls.

"They were so excited about it," said Miss Frank, 26, who now lives in Florida. "When they would succeed, we'd give them a pencil as a prize and they would be so grateful."

The women also spent a lot of free time with the girls. "We played soccer with the girls. We sang and we danced with them," Miss Frank said.

Mrs. Hauge bought an electric sewing machine for Hekima Place and taught some of the girls how to sew. Before they had a sewing machine with a foot pedal. While the girls reveled in the ease of using the electric machine, sometimes they would have to stop in the middle of a sewing lesson because the electricity was used up for the day or there were other needs for it at the compound.

"Electricity is such an issue over there. When you have it, you have 20 other things that have to be done. You could be in the middle of a seam and the electric would go out," Mrs. Hauge said.

Mrs. Hauge said she was able to make new skirts and vests for a group of girls who were traveling to Rome with Mrs. Fletcher and the girls were able to make matching purses from the leftover fabric.

The women also taught the girls and the mums, the adult women hired to help care for the girls, how to bake using a new propane oven that had just arrived at Hekima Place. Mrs. Hauge said it was a challenge because the oven did not have heat that was regulated and they needed to use a thermometer to determine the temperature, which changed frequently.

They learned to make brownies, chocolate chip cookies, which they had never eaten before, and birthday cakes.

The women were at Hekima Place for Easter, so they taught the girls how to color eggs and held an Easter egg hunt. "They had never done that before and they had no idea why we were coloring eggs, but they loved it," Miss Frank said. They also gave each of the girls a bright-colored bandana to wear.

The women stayed in the guest house on the property but ate dinner with the girls each night.

The women also hosted the 20 older girls, ages 12 to 15, at the guest house for a night of games and conversation about teen issues. Some of the topics the girls wanted to talk about were "mindblowing," Miss Frank said.

"They would ask 'what do you do when you go home over holiday and one of your family members is trying to sell you. Another one said 'God says you are not supposed to lie, but if someone is going to rape you, can you tell them you are HIV positive or not?' " Miss Frank said. "These are not the kinds of conversations you would expect to hear from teens."

Fox Chapel family

Lulu Orr and her husband, Prentiss, of Fox Chapel, had done volunteer work in Africa 19 years earlier and had always wanted to return, with their three children, for a volunteer project.

Last spring, when Mrs. Orr's sister e-mailed her a copy of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about Mrs. Fletcher and her work, the Orrs knew they had found their project. Mrs. Orr contacted Kathy English, of Upper St. Clair, who serves as Mrs. Fletcher's treasurer and was put in touch with Mrs. Fletcher.

The Orr family, which includes daughters, Lee, 18, and Terry, 15, and son, Charlie, 11, met Mrs. Fletcher when she returned to the area to raise funds last June. It was one week before they left for their trip to Hekima Place and Mrs. Fletcher mentioned that the girls did not have any recreation facilities.

So the Orr family spent their 12-day visit to Hekima Place building a wooden swing set and soccer goal posts for the girls.

Mrs. Orr, who is the director of the Good Grief Center for Bereavement Support in Munhall, said it took her husband and a custodian at Hekima Place a full day, from sunrise to nightfall, to find and purchase enough wood for the projects.

"The girls waited patiently while the swing set was finished. They listened to my husband say, 'This is for you and we hope you have fun on it.' Then their reaction was really quite wonderful with lots of screaming and smiling. They had a lot of fun with the goal posts as well," she said.

Mrs. Orr said her children were impressed with how hard the girls at Hekima Place worked at their studies and how they did two hours of homework each night without complaint.

"They don't have to be told to do their homework. They are just so happy to have the opportunity to be in school. They work their tails off. They are using pencils smaller than my pinky and sharing one eraser between eight girls," she said

"The books they have are very outdated but they are just soaking up the information and working together in a way that we don't find in American schools."

Mt. Lebanon coed

Erin Hohlfelder, 20, of Mt. Lebanon, an international affairs major at George Washington University, went to Hekima Place April 12 to May 12 to do an independent study for an academic analysis on orphanages in Kenya, where she had spent a semester.

She said she chose to study in Africa because her interest "has always been with HIV-AIDS activism, female empowerment and girls' issues."

Her mission at Hekima Place switched quickly from professional to personal. She lived in one of the houses with the girls instead of the guest house. She tutored the girls when they were on a holiday and helped with homework when they returned to their classes.

During a week when Mrs. Fletcher was in Rome with six of the girls, Ms. Hohlfelder took responsibility for caring for a group of the girls.

An even though her experience was deeply personal, Ms. Hohlfelder left with enough academic information to write a 40-page research perspective in which she analyzed the level of care that Hekima Place provided as compared with other places in Kenya.

"It was a tremendous difference. The most crucial thing was the element of education. Everything the girls do is geared toward making sure they can go to school and do well in school and making sure they are prepared," she said. "Education first and foremost sets them apart."

The school-aged girls at Hekima Place attend a nearby private school at which Mrs. Fletcher pays $1 a day for each in tuition. In the fall, some of the girls will attend a public school, which will be free of charge.

Other Kenyan orphanages, she said, were able to do little more than provide basic food and shelter for the children.

Another factor that set Hekima Place apart is the message of female empowerment.

"A lot of girls in Kenya are taught to do chores and take care of the family. But they are never told you can achieve things, be a professional. Kate really encourages and inspires them in this way," Ms. Hohlfelder said.

She said murals on the walls at Hekima Place encourage the girls to become successful women and many of their activities and outings revolve around that message.

Ms. Hohlfelder also produced a PowerPoint presentation on Hekima Place and the overwhelming problem of AIDS orphans in Africa and the plight of young girls in the country. It features the photos and personal stories of some of the girls.

Mrs. Fletcher presented it last week at Ms. Hohlfelder's church, Bower Hill Community Church in Mt. Lebanon.

"It's been really fun for me to think that something that started as a school project is being used to help her [raise funds]. And the girls' stories are so full of redemption. They've come from such unloving backgrounds and are such warm and fun girls who are able to achieve so much."