(PRESS RELEASE) Gem Legacy is launching its 2020 Focus on Health, with a campaign to supply the Mwatate Children’s Home, an orphanage in Kenya, with a solar panel. Gem Legacy is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to education, vocational training, and local economies in East African colored gemstone mining communities.
“The Mwatate Children’s Home is a community effort and its success in supporting the kids has been largely due to the presence of gemstones – but the need is greater than the local ability to fund it,” says Roger Dery, executive director of Gem Legacy. “Our vision is that the global gem and jewelry community will rally around the marginalized in colored gemstone mining communities.”
The home houses over 30 children, age 5-18, in the region of southern Kenya where tsavorite garnet is found. Electricity costs are a large burden on the home’s finances and the cost of the solar panel will pay for itself over a five-year period through the savings the home will collect through lower electricity costs.
The solar panel will benefit the children in two major areas: (1) hot water for personal hygiene and sanitary facilities and (2) light for educational pursuits, including homework.
The children are all orphans or do not have a family to live with for various reasons and the home supports them mentally, emotionally, and physically. Mwatate Children’s Home seeks to ensure that the orphans are equipped to flourish as adults when they need to leave the home.
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