Our aims

To rescue desperate homeless children from the streets of Kenya, where drugs, violence and prostitution are rife.

To provide these children with a home, education, care and counselling.

To uplift and empower the community by providing work opportunities.

About

Restart is the name for The Sanata Charitable Trust, which is a registered charity and consists of two Trusts, one based in the United Kingdom, the other in Gilgil, Kenya.  The purpose of the UK Trust is to generate funds for the development and ongoing costs of the Restart Children’s Centre.

In Gilgil, the Trust is headed by Mary Coulson MBE, (pictured above with HE The British High Commissioner, at the opening of the new Centre in 2015) whose energy, compassion and determination to improve the lot of local children led to her founding Restart in 2008, and hence to its profound impact on so many young lives, and the wider community.

Restart now looks after over 100 children, aged from a just few months old, in a new orphanage (opened in 2014) providing food, shelter, welfare and education. Most of our children have suffered severe, often sexual, abuse and deprivation, all have significant emotional issues.  It can take many months of love and care before they get over the hand to mouth existence they were leading on the streets, and are able to enjoy a more settled life in the Restart Centre.

The charity is also trying to tackle the causes of child abuse by supporting a number of local initiatives to help employ and hence empower the community. These include a briquette making operation that provides the Centre with all its fuel requirements, and generates some income through local sales; a women’s  craft group making bags, shoes and jewellery; our own agricultural plot supplying vegetables to the Centre and the village; an extensive herb garden that produces holistic medicinal treatments.  Restart provides employment for more than 90 adults, a number of whom are former children from the orphanage.

Restart receives no grants or funding from the Kenyan government – the Centre is supported purely by donations and sponsorship.