DECATUR - The new nonprofit organization Pixie Fennessey and Tiffany Hall formed is about providing the most basic of needs: food and clean water.

It's called Stand Up for Grace (standupforgrace.org) and will benefit By Grace Disabled and Orphan Centre in Kayole, for children orphaned by AIDS. It's one of 66 districts in Nairobi, Kenya, that are considered slums. Both women have spent significant amounts of time at the orphanage as volunteers.

"I just fell in love with the kids," Fennessey said.

The slum areas of Nairobi are overcrowded, with little or no sanitation, tin and manure houses and a drought that has lasted several years. It's actually against the law to collect rainwater, even if there were any to collect, and people are forced to drink, wash and cook with water that also contains sewage.

Mike Huff, an adviser at Richland, received a grant four years ago from the Department of Public Health for AIDS education work in Decatur and led a group to Kenya to do AIDS education and prevention work there.

Fennessey was part of that group and encountered By Grace on that trip. She has returned numerous times since then, and in the spring, she took a sabbatical to spend eight months in the area. When she returned, she made a DVD detailing the many social problems in the area and created several new social science courses to offer at Richland. One of those classes will be "The Kenya Experience," which will provide students a chance to volunteer in that country.

Hall accompanied Fennessey on her fourth trip to Nairobi and she, too, fell in love with the kids. She spent eight weeks there.

One of the most rewarding things Fennessey and Hall said they do with the children is just hang out with them. There are so few adults and so many children in the orphanage that the kids are desperate for adult attention and time.

"I go lay down in their room on Saturday afternoons and just talk to them," Fennessey said.

There are three kinds of "orphans" as defined by the Kenya government: "total orphans," who are children that have lost both mother and father, and have no other relatives; "orphans," who have lost one parent, but the other is sick, usually with AIDS, and other relatives lack the means to take them in; and "vulnerable children," whose family members have AIDS but aren't yet sick enough that the children need to live elsewhere.

"Many of them have grandparents or other family members, and in months off (when school isn't in session), many of them will visit or stay with other family members," Hall said.

Money is so tight that the director sends kids elsewhere for visits during school breaks so she won't have to feed them, Fennessey said. Besides the resident children, a lot of children in the area who still live with their families attend school at By Grace and eat meals there because their families can't take care of them.

"She allows the children to come to school and have meals," Fennessey said. "They may have sick parents, but the parents don't want them to come and live at the orphanage yet. A lot of times the parents will bring the kids (to the orphanage) before they die, because the only other alternative is for the kids to live on the street."

The experience in Kenya prompted Hall to change her career path and study nursing, in the hopes that she'll be able to work in a developing country, at least part of the time. Health care is hit-and-miss in Kenya, and even the clinics they do have lack basic equipment and supplies.

"The big draw was getting an 'in' to the medical scene in a place like that," Hall said. "Then I fell in love with the kids at the orphanage. They are just the coolest group of kids. The things they've been through and the way they're able to cope, and they're just happy, and it's something I think everybody should experience.

"It gives you a totally different perspective on everything."

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