The Nairobi Children’s Rescue Centre
Our first implementation partner. The Centre gives shelter and essential care to orphaned and abandoned children aged 0–7, with a focus on family reintegration and family-based care.
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Spending time with children in care is more than a charitable act. It is a meaningful exchange of care, learning, and growth, for the child and for the volunteer.
Through our Volunteer Programme, people give their time, skills, and heart to children who need steady, caring adults in their lives. It is open to anyone who wants to help, and it offers psychology graduates a valuable route into practical, hands-on experience.
Volunteers are never left to work alone. Routine training in child and developmental interventions, led by qualified professionals, helps every volunteer feel prepared and supported in the care they give.
For a child who has been separated from family, a familiar face that returns, week after week, is where trust begins. Reliable, loving attention helps children feel safe, form secure attachments, and slowly learn that grown-ups can be counted on.
Every placement is grounded in play-based, trauma-informed approaches and psychological support. Children are met with patience and warmth, so they can feel seen, heard, and safe enough to play, express themselves, and heal.
Volunteers never work alone. A supervisor guides each placement, so volunteers gain real, practical experience with young children and come to understand why steady, attuned relationships matter so much in a child’s healing.
Brain Development and Attachment (Birth to 4 Years)
Every volunteer in our Volunteer Programme is trained before stepping into a children’s home, and training continues throughout their time with us.
This workshop was led by our founder, Nazia Basha Taylor, a child and developmental psychologist. Nazia guided volunteers through how a young child’s brain develops from birth to four years, and how secure attachment with a caring adult shapes that growth.
It matters because the children we serve have often known separation, loss, or neglect. Volunteers who understand what a child is experiencing can respond with patience and notice small signs of progress, offering the steady, safe presence a child needs. Training also keeps children safe, and gives volunteers the reassurance of expert guidance behind them.
We work with two children’s homes in Nairobi, where our volunteers are placed.
Our first implementation partner. The Centre gives shelter and essential care to orphaned and abandoned children aged 0–7, with a focus on family reintegration and family-based care.
A non-profit children’s home in Nairobi that has cared for abandoned children since 2002. Our Volunteer Programme is growing through this partnership.
Formerly known as the Nairobi Children’s Home, the Centre was established in 1989 as a rescue centre and place of safety. It is the only government-run home in Nairobi for orphaned and abandoned children from birth to seven years of age, with space for around 60 children, and it has served vulnerable infants for more than 35 years.
The Centre provides food, shelter, and clothing; healthcare; home tracing and family reintegration; nursery education; and placement networking with partner organisations and foster care homes, so that every child can grow up in a family setting wherever possible.
It is The Metanoia Foundation’s first implementation partner. Together we built a play therapy room for the children, and our volunteers give their time here under the guidance of supervisors.
Happy Life Mission runs Happy Life Children’s Home, a non-profit, faith-based children’s home in Roysambu, Nairobi. It began in 2002, when Pastor Peter and Faith Ndungu opened their doors to three abandoned children.
Today the home cares for abandoned children, with newborns to three-year-olds living at its Nairobi campus.
Through our collaboration, the Volunteer Programme is expanding so that more children can have the steady, caring presence of a volunteer.
The Metanoia Foundation offers psychology graduates a pathway to practical experience in providing psychological and trauma-informed support to vulnerable children.
What to submit
Please email the following to admin@themetanoiafoundation.com:
Please attach all four documents to your email, with your name, phone number, and university and course in the message.
Questions? Call +254 712 33 22 22.
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