Restart Africa founder Mary Coulson and program director Marvine Gaye were in Ballarat this week to help raise funds and support for the Restart Centre in Gilgil, 120km north of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

The charity takes in children who are abandoned, abused, living on the street, involved in the sex trade and caught up in other horrific circumstances and gives them a home, education and family life.

About 110 children from babies to young adults in their 20s now live at the centre and enjoy a life far different than the original path they were on.

“We rescue children, the disadvantaged, damaged, unwanted, unloved kids from the streets of Gilgil, and sometimes from homes. Many had slept on the side of the road or wherever they were abandoned, sexually or physically abused, and we bring them up as a family with a lot of love and care. We educated them, feed them, and do everything parents would do,” Ms Coulson said.

Unlike many children’s homes in Africa where children are sent on their way when they turn 18, those in Restart’s care stay until they are qualified and trained to do something.

Students at Restart attend the local primary school, high school, and many go on to university.

Restart also runs community programs including a women’s handcraft business, a renewable energy briquette project, agriculture courses which also grow fresh produce to feed the children, and grow medicinal herbs which Ms Coulson uses in her Nairobi herbalist business – and has become the largest employer in the area.

Ballarat couple John and Gaye Welford first met Ms Coulson about 40 years ago when all three were teaching in Kenya, not far from where the home now stands, and they reunited on a trip last year where they visited the Restart Centre.

“These projects not only provide employment and empowerment and education for the community, they help to fund the Restart Centre, which is the children’s place, because it receives no funding at all and relies on donations,” Ms Welford said.

When Ms Coulson established Restart in 2008, it cared for six children in little more than a tin shed. A second premises was quickly needed as numbers grew, and in 2015 the charity moved in to a purpose-built complex funded by donations.

“We had a shack to begin with, then another terrible place that was bigger, then we managed to get money to build this beautiful home. It’s got bunk beds, duvets, pillows, mattresses and the day we moved the children from old to new it was like a revelation – they were walking with their chests out with such pride. The psychological difference from that day forward was miraculous.”

Ms Coulson hoped the changes in the children’s lives were the “beginning of a snowball” that will change the area in to the future.

“The kids with us are not going to bring their kids up like they were treated. They will bring their kids up how we treat them – with an expansive mindset as opposed to a survival mindset that includes stealing, begging and worse.”

And unlike some other homes, Restart strives to give children a better quality of life rather than just a basic existence.

“We believe children deserve to be treated as well as we can possibly treat them,” she said.

“They usually come to us malnourished, and are considered vermin by the local population, who don’t understand why we actually go to the trouble to help these kids who they consider as little rats of the streets.”

Ms Welford said Restart was an oasis in the middle of a very deprived area.

“What blew us away is the fact that you couldn’t walk past a child that didn’t grin at you, or grab your hand, or give you a hug – they are so well adjusted and happy.”