How we work with children's homes.

The Rahma Organization raises money from businesses, from volunteers, and from friends and family, and turns it into food, clothing, medication and equipment for children living in existing children's homes. We agree a date with a home's management, then come to cook and serve food, hand over supplies, and, where the money allows, bring volunteer doctors for a medical camp.

We are not a children's home and we provide no care. We never take a child into our custody, never remove a child from a home, and take no part in any decision about a child. Responsibility for the children rests with the home that cares for them and with the authorities that oversee it, before our visit, during it and afterwards.

A home admits us on its own terms. Its rules apply to our people for the whole visit, and where its rules and ours differ, the home's stand.

Our people work where the staff can see them. Nobody working with us spends time alone with a child, takes a child anywhere, or contacts a child afterwards. Nobody may strike, humiliate, threaten or shout at a child, or behave towards anyone in a way that is sexual, exploitative or degrading. Anyone who behaves this way stops working with us immediately, and we inform the home's management.

We ask children for no personal details, and we keep no record of any individual child.

We cook and serve the food ourselves, alongside the home's staff, and we hand clothing and other supplies to the children on the day.

Medication is handled differently. We buy it with donated money and give it to the home's management, who hold it and administer it to the children. Nobody from Rahma gives a child medication.

Our medical camps are run by volunteer doctors, found through our own networks, each practising under their own professional registration. We organize the day and buy the equipment and medicines, and clinical decisions are theirs alone. Our other volunteers assist with the organizing and take no part in examination or treatment.

We photograph our visits so that the people who paid for them can see what their money did, and we ask before taking them.

A child in a home's care appears in a published photograph only where the home has authorized it in writing, and only in a picture that shows the child with dignity. A child who does not want to be photographed is not photographed, whatever has been agreed. An identifiable adult appears only with their own agreement.

We publish no names and no addresses, and we do not name a home beside a photograph in which a child can be recognized, because together they reveal where that child lives. We do not photograph anyone receiving medical attention, and we do not use images of hardship for effect. Location data stored inside photograph files is removed before publication.

The home, or anyone photographed, may ask us to remove an image at any time, without giving a reason, and we will.

Everything we hand over was bought with money somebody donated, and the members account for all of it. Our members do the buying and keep the receipts, and the Treasurer holds them and reports to the membership.

Whoever paid for a visit is shown what it bought: the receipts, and photographs from the day. Our telephone line receives no money. Donations reach us only through the bank details published on our donate page.

If one of our people has behaved badly, or you are concerned about how we spent what you gave, tell us. Those are the matters we answer for, and we will address them.

A concern about a child's care, or about a home or its staff, belongs with the home's management and with the authorities rather than with us. Childline Kenya can be called free of charge on 116, at any time, by an adult or a child. Where a child is in immediate danger, call the police.

Nobody who raises a concern honestly will face retaliation from us.

The officers review this policy on the date shown above, and whenever something happens that shows it needs changing. It is published in full so that the homes we visit, the people who give, and anyone considering either, can hold us to it.