Southampton Nursery Assistant Visits Kenya with Compassion

21-year-old Lauren Wade from Woolston recently travelled to Kenya, with Christian radio station UCB (United Christian Broadcasters) and child development charity Compassion UK.

Throughout July, any UCB listener who sponsored a child with Compassion was considered to join a trip to Kenya to meet their newly sponsored child. Lauren Wade was one of two sponsors selected and visited her sponsored child, Moses, and Compassion projects in the Kisumu area. The trip was covered on UCB radio throughout last week and a documentary following Lauren’s journey will be made and shown on UCB TV in October.

“I was born-and-bred in Southampton,” explains Lauren. This was her first trip outside of Europe. “For a while it didn’t sink in that I was actually going to Kenya, I was so surprised. I expected everything to be different there but I felt surprisingly at home.”

As well as visiting Moses’ home, Lauren had the chance to visit the Compassion project he is a part of. “I never thought about the bigger picture of sponsorship. It affects so much more than just Moses’ life. You sponsor a child and you think about that child. But now I’ve met Moses’ family, I can see how the support impacts the family, the project and even Kenya.”

After returning home Lauren reflects, “Not everyone has what we have. The other things we spend our money on are nothing compared to the difference we can make through spending that amount on something else. I like working with children because they get excited about the smallest things. For adults, things become so everyday, but for children everything is new and fascinating. The trip gave me a motivation to make a bigger difference through what I do.”

Director of Broadcasting at UCB, Dave Withers said, “We’re looking forward to using the documentary to help raise awareness of the good that child sponsorship can do, for children and communities overseas. The film will be part of our ‘World of Hope’ series and will be shown on UCB TV later in the year.”

The group travelled to Kenya from 2nd-9th September.

For more information, photographs and interviews contact Bekah Legg: rebekahl@compassionuk.org

Notes for editors

Compassion is an international child development charity with more than 70 years experience working with some of the world’s poorest children. At present more than 1.6 million children attend Compassion’s church-driven projects in 29 of the world’s poorest countries.www.compassionuk.org.

United Christian Broadcasters (UCB) is a Christian media charity, broadcasting nationally on DAB radio, via UCB Player and online.

UCB is the publisher of the daily devotional, The Word for Today, currently reaching more than a million people across the UK and Ireland every quarter www.ucb.co.uk