TERRY Newton can’t be at the Hexham Abbey Burns Night supper that will be held in aid of the charity he founded in Kenya, but he thinks he’s found a solution.

Why not get Jackson, one of the street boys rescued by Uhuru Ministries and a dab hand at computers, to make a short video to be shown on the night?

“He’s brilliant at all that stuff,” said Terry.

“He could go into the homes of one or two of the people we support and maybe record a short message from me, too.

“It would be quite nice for people in Hexham to see Jackson’s work, because his education is sponsored by St Joseph’s Middle School.”

Terry, a former social worker who first went out to Kenya as a missionary in the 1990s, founded Uhuru – which means ‘freedom’ – at the end of that decade.

Its aim: to free some of the world’s poorest children from poverty by giving them an education.

Based in Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city, it is funded largely by Tynedale folk, with its supporters gathered from Terry’s network spanning out from Stocksfield Baptist Church and Hexham Churches Together.

He is delighted with the latest offer of support, a sponsorship provided by the partners and staff at Hexham Dental Practice.

The £6,000 they provide over the next four years will put Brian Majiwa (21) through his course in microbiology at the Jomo Kenyatta University in Nairobi.

“That should get him a good job eventually and that’s what we’re interested in,” said Terry.

While much of the money is raised here and Uhuru has a Tynedale board of trustees, Terry knows it is time that Kenya looked after its own affairs.

A new board of trustees has just been appointed in Kisumu and he plans to spend the first six months of 2016 there – the reason for his absence during Burns Night – helping its members find their feet.

“Nothing tends to get done when I’m not there,” he said wryly.

Balancing the books is tricky, as all charities know, and particularly so in the wake of Britain’s tough austerity years.

Uhuru ran an orphanage, christened Grace Home, for several years but was forced to take the “awful decision” to close it down in 2013 and make the seven members of staff redundant.

Instead, it now employs a social worker to support the boys who once lived there and focuses all of its energy on raising funds to pay for their education.

It also helps children who, while not orphaned, wouldn’t get an education without outside help.

Terry said: “The social worker does regular visits to check on the children in their own homes, because the conditions are generally very poor.

“But, you know, some of the boys who lived in Grace Home are doing better at school than they were when they were living more comfortably with proper beds and electricity and two substantial meals a day.

“Maybe they feel they have something to strive for now.”

Although Uhuru is not designed exclusively for boys, that is the way it has turned out.

It tends to be young boys who end up living on the streets of Kisumu, because the girls who have been orphaned or turned out by their poverty-stricken families either become housemaids or marry young.

The Kenyan education system is very flexible in that young people go to school when money and family circumstances allow.

Often they just get a year in before being removed to work and then pick up again at the same level a couple of years later.

So the 16 pupils Uhuru has studying at primary level, the 26 at secondary level and the nine currently at university are a real assortment of ages.

The charity is also starting to see some of the boys it has helped, now emerging into manhood, take up their first jobs, which Terry is finding tremendously satisfying.

“We’re helping four find employment at the minute,” he said.

“In the last three months, we have seen another two get full-time work, one as a plumber and another as an HGV driver.”

Always one for rushing in to help, Terry has been reined in of late by his Tynedale trustees – tasked with ensuring the books actually balance – until Uhuru has more money in its coffers.

Last year, he was desperate to help a young man the charity had supported all the way through secondary education, who faced having to crash out of university when his funds dried up.

Terry said: “I tried to argue his case when it came to university, but I was told ‘no way, we’re not taking him through university’, so the aged grandmother he lived with sold her only asset – her cow.

“That paid for his first year; he’s doing a BA in education, with a speciality in IT.

“He was doing so well, Caleb, our manager at Uhuru, and I couldn’t bear to see him drop out, so now we’re paying his fees ourselves.”

He’s also keen to help another boy whose life fell apart when his grandparents withdrew from the cross-family arrangement supporting his education.

“They left him with debts at the school, which then threw him out,” said Terry.

“He now has no money, no schooling and no prospects – we can’t have that.”

Further information about Uhuru Ministries can be found on their website at www.uhuruministries.org.uk.