Hello, I am Divine, one of Mama Arlene's children of The Urukundo Home for Children in Muhanga District, Rwanda. I am Mama Arlene's "first born". No, I am not the youngest. But I was the first girl-child to come to live under Mama Arlene's roof. Now thirty-five others have come. All of us are fully housed, cared for and given an education. And, an additional 245 children from the region join us at the community school with sponsored scholarships from Hope Made Real's Scholarship Program.I came because I could no longer live in my family home. Others come as orphans because all of their living relatives have died of AIDS or malaria. Still other older children are survivors of the genocide.
Each of us now has our own bed. The girls are housed in apartments with bunk beds with a house-mother. The boys live in a house with four bedrooms and four bunk beds in each room with a house-mother. Because of kind people I am most fortunate to now have food, bedding, clothing, school supplies, a mosquito net, lodging, education, medical insurance and basic medical care, utilities, transportation, and, of course, water.
Mama Arlene rents the houses we currently live in, but we recently acquired land and are building the first of five cottages. The plan is to have ten children and a mama or parents in each cottage. This means our little home will grow so that soon I will have fifty brothers and sisters.