A group called Committee of Friends, COF Abuja, weekend, visited and donated items worth about N1 million including an undisclosed amount of money to Mother Theresa Children’s Home in Abuja.
The Chairman, COF Abuja, Chief Henry Femowei, explained that the visit was part of the decision of the organization to impact the lives of children in Mother Theresa Children’s Home who deserves attention, care and protection, which the organization deemed it feet to come this time to celebrate with them.
According to Femowei this time the nation is facing serious economic challenges occasioned by the novel Coronavirus, COVID-19 pandemic and other factors children who are less privileged need assistance.
Some of the items donated include foodstuff, cartoons of bottled water, boxes of indomie, cartoons of spaghetti, detergents, and others.
COF Abuja is neither religious nor ethnic organization but people of like-minds in assisting themselves and other Nigerians.
He said: “The Committee of Friends Abuja for many years now have celebrated with our families especially during the Yelutide, however, this year 2020 has its uniqueness for being the year with the COVID-19 pandemic which led to the lockdown of economies worldwide resulting in untold hardship for citizens especially for the third world countries like Nigeria.
“It is for this reason that we the Committee of Friends Abuja unanimously adopted the idea of this visit to share our token of love, foodstuff and cash with the management of the Mother Theresa Children’s Home.
“We also visit as an opportunity to thank the management and staff of the Mother Theresa Children’s Home for their service to humanity. At the same time such as this, when people can barely carry their individual burden, you have taken upon yourselves the responsibility for all these children. We are saying may God strengthen you and also provide what you need to care for the children.
“For the children of this home we wish to let you know that as you live in this home with the warmth and high quality of perpetual care provided to you by the management and staff of Mother Theresa Children’s Home.”
After welcoming COF Abuja, the Proprietress, Mother Theresa Children’s Home, Catherine Emeagwali, expressed joy for the donation and support given to the Home at this time, and said the children and staff are doing well and appreciate the group.
Emeagwali also disclosed that the founder of the organization was moved with compassion and care established the Home to cater for children of the less privileged.
According to her currently there are 22 children , which the youngest child is less than two weeks old, while the oldest is 12 years, while there are those ranging between one month and three years old.
However, she made it clear that, “Some people think we are orphanage but we are not really orphanage, we are children’s home and none of the kids here are orphans but we have gotten them from different ways, maybe they abandoned them by our gate or government, police, NAPTIP or an individual call us or sometime the parents cannot take care of their kid or maybe the mother is guarding premature labour, teenage pregnancy and she wants to go back to school.
“So they always write to government and explain to them that they cannot take care of the kids at this time and if the government can help them for some certain time, and that is why we always said we have children’s home not orphanage home.”
She also said their source for the upkeep of the Home has been on support of individuals, groups and civil society organizations, “We do not actually lack, we make sure we pay our staff salary as when due.”
She also explained that the Home is not owned by the Catholic Church despite the name ‘Mother Theresa’.
“We are not Catholic owned though the founder was a Catholic but she is late now but she just raised that in the Catholic faith and she was inspired by Mother Theresa. So we are completely privately owned and we get our funding from societies like yours as well as individuals though government do not really support us”, she said.