08 December 2011

SEVENTIES pop band Showaddywaddy is set to play in Dorchester Abbey to help a charity that sees youngsters from south Oxfordshire help orphans in Kenya.
The band will be in town on 28 January to raise funds for Operation Noah’s Ark and the Nasio Trust.

Operation Noah’s Ark was set up by John Cornelius, when he was the police officer for Berinsfield. He worked with Nancy Hunt, one of the founders of the Nasio Trust. Now retired, John runs Operation Noah’s Ark, taking 14 to 17-year-olds to work on Nasio Trust projects in Kenya.

John said: “Initially we went to the youth club in Berinsfield to see if the teenagers there wanted to be involved in fundraising to have a roof put on and in doing that got some publicity to raise the trust’s profile. Within two or three weeks I was presenting it to the youth club and they were really interested.”

The first group of youngsters headed out to Kenya in 2004. The next trip is due to take place in March and fundraising events are well underway. When The Door went to press a group were rehearsing The Affairs at Meddler’s Top, a murder mystery performed at Dorchester Abbey on 10 December. The show included a three course meal.

Thomas, 15, a pupil at Larkmead School, went to Kenya in 2009. He said: “It was eye opening to see how they live in Kenya and the different facilities.”
Megan, 13, said; “My mum has been to Kenya twice and feels strongly about the children there. Fundraising has been fun, and I’m basing my life around it at the moment, rehearsing twice a week.”

Tabitha, 14, said: “We’ll be working with orphans and we’ll be going into into a hopsital, taking in baby grows and bread and milk to new borns.”
Operation Noah’s Ark raised funds from youth organizations and in November 2004 took four youngsters from Berinsfield Youth Club to Kenya. “It was pretty frightening at the time as they were given machetes to knock down the mud huts. The people there weren’t used to seeing white faces,” said John.

Romeo Challenger, Showaddywaddy’s drummer, said: “I hadn’t previously been aware of the amazing work that the Nasio Trust has been doing until we were asked to play at the Dorchester on Thames event, which is supporting the charity. HIV is a huge problem all over Africa, but these children until recent years were very much the forgetten ones. We are only too happy to lend our support to the Nasio Trust to try and help in any small way possible.”

The Nasio Trust is a Christian charity set up by the daughters of the late Irene Mudenyo. Irene found an abandoned, malnourished baby in a sugarcane plantation on her farm in western Kenya. The baby inspired the formation of the Nasio Trust which began as a roadside kiosk providing one meal a day for 15 children.
The trust now runs two purpose built day care centres, including the Noah’s Ark Day Care Centre which helps more than 200 children.