Lighthouse Children's Home - Childhood Matters
Who We Are
Welcome to Lighthouse Chidren’s Home, a beacon of hope for orphans and vulnerable street children and children with special needs living in Awasi, Kisumu, Kenya.
Lighthouse Children’s Home was founded by our CEO, Noel O’Reilly, who has worked in Kenya since 2009. In 2011, with his friend, Eannes Ongus, they set up the registered charity, Lighthouse Children’s Home.
Lighthouse Children’s Home is part of the Lighthouse Community Based Organisation (CBO) based in Kenya.
We are a non-government / non-profit organisation, registered within the Republic of Kenya as a government charitable organisation, with the Ministry of Labour, Social Security & Service, Children and Social Development.
Our registration number is: MH0/CBO/37443/2017 / Certificate number: 37443
Meet Noel
CEO and Founder
Noel has worked in Kenya since 2009, following a short volunteer placement in a large orphanage in Kitale, Kenya. He was horrified by the awful situation of orphans and street children. Their situation was exacerbated by terrible poverty, HIV / AIDS, family breakdown and horrific post-electoral tribal violence.
Noel has travelled extensively in East Africa and have seen the awful plight of thousands of orphans and street children in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan. This experience, coupled with his own childhood background as an orphan and then in social work, mental health advocacy and his work with special needs children, has led him to take early retirement from full time paid employment and he now devotes himself to fundraising and actively working to build a home for some of these children.
Noel qualified as a social worker in 1981 working with special needs children and vulnerable families. Throughout his long career he has worked for several local authorities as well as charitable organisations such as Barnardos.
From 2002, Noel worked as an Independent Mental Health Advocate with the charitable organisation ‘Speaking Up.’
Noel takes no payment or salary for the work he does with Lighthouse Children’s Home - out of a conviction that this is the right thing to do. Noel lives and fundraises in the UK.
Meet Eannes
Director / Co-Founder
Having lost both parents at the age of 10, Eannes had to be raised by his aging grandmother who later also passed away when he was a third year student at university.
Eannes fully understands the plight of street, orphaned, special need and vulnerable children and his only desire is to offer a helping hand to some of these children in realization of their dreams.
Eannes holds BSc Information Systems and Technology from United States International University Africa (USIU Africa), MA Leadership and Management from York St. John University, UK and is currently pursuing his MA Communication Studies from USIU Africa. Eannes’ educational journey was made possible by securing full scholarships.
It was this opportunity that led him to want to help other disadvantaged children in his local area. Eannes lives and works in Kenya.
Lighthouse is made of a board of Trustees, which we are proud is made up from a group of local people from the area where our work is rolled out.
