She was told she was going to school, instead, she spent 6 years in an institution
12.12.2025
Perpetua faced a turbulent home life in Kenya. Her parents were separated, and she stayed with her grandparents until she was six before being taken to a boarding school in Embu, a town in Central Kenya.
She lived there for four years but was then told she needed to move schools. The reality was very different.
“I was told I would make new friends and further my studies, but when I got there, I realised it was a Children’s Home,” she says.
Adapting to the institution was hard. I had to learn how to do my own laundry, and some of the staff were harsh and made us do chores for them, like collecting firewood or fetching water for them.
-Perpetua
Perpetua had always performed well at school, but due to the conditions at the institution, her grades dropped to average. “If you dropped marks, you had some severe punishment. That affected me mentally for some time.” She reflected.
When Perpetua was around 12 years old, she left the institution and returned to her grandparents, but she found herself back in an institution again during a number of her teenage years. Now 21, she is back with her grandparents and says it is nice to be with her old friends and have ‘a glimpse at what life is like staying in a family.’
Perpetua isn’t alone in her experience. There are more than 26,000 children in Kenya living in privately-run institutions and 1,500 in statutory institutions in Kenya.
Lumos has been determined to make a difference since we started working in Kenya in 2018. We’ve supported the Government to strengthen its laws protecting children and contributed to Kenya’s National Care Reform Strategy, a commitment and plan to transition away from institutions and towards family and community-based care.
We have bold ambitions in Kenya to reunite 50% of institutionalised children in Embu County with their families or place them in foster care and then extend this across the Eastern Province.
Perpetua is now 21 and studying Human Resources at Management, and dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. She also wants to dedicate time to helping young people who have been in an institution with their own ambitions.
She says the support she gets at home is better than at an institution:
At an institution, they leave you to decide your life, and there is no guidance. Whereas when you’re around your family members or parents, they can get to know what you need, you can feel comfortable enough to tell them your dreams, and maybe they can help you.
This story is part of the Lumos Home for the Holidays Appeal series. Join our annual appeal so we can give more children the greatest gift of all this holiday season, a safe and loving family.
