BY Daniel Harkins | December 19 | 
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Former First Minister’s generosity helps raise funds for orphanage
Alex Salmond has auctioned gifts received during his time as First Minster to raise money for a Kenyan orphanage set up by a young Catholic from South Uist.
The sale of the former First Minister’s goods raised £43,000 at Great Western Auctions last Saturday, with the proceeds split between children’s cancer charity Clic Sargent, the Scottish Youth Theatre and St Jerome’s Children’s Home in Kenya.
Gemma Steele set up St Jerome’s—named after the patron saint of abandoned children and orphans—out of necessity after the children she was helping to look after were left homeless. The young woman from South Uist picked up a Young Scot Unsung Hero Award earlier this year.
As a teenager, Ms Steele had flown out to the African country to teach and volunteer in St Stephen’s Children’s Home. When the orphanage closed, Ms Steele used £2000 raised by schools back in Scotland to buy a plot of land and build a new home for the children. St Jerome’s was completed in 2012, and is now home to 25 children, aged between four and 18, with room for another 11.
Ms Steele said St Jerome’s came to be one of Alex Salmond’s chosen charities after she met him at an event to open nominations for next year’s Young Scot awards and was invited to a reception at Bute House, the First Minister’s residence. The money raised, she said, is much needed.
“At the moment what we have coming in is just covering our 25 kids and our staff,” the former parishioner of St Peter’s in Daliburgh said. “So there’s not much in case, say, one of the children was in an accident and we had to take them to the hospital for an operation. What we have now is covering food, water, education and staff wages—just the very basics.
“We are also looking at an outreach programme to street children, and we’ve got an unreliable vehicle which is second hand—it’s just an absolute nightmare—and there’s a lot of travel involved to get the children to school so a vehicle would be ideal.
“Our team is made up of quite a few medics so we’d also like to set-up a wee clinic because many people are dying simply because they can’t get treatment. Here [in the UK] many people slag-off the NHS but we are very lucky to have it, because [in Kenya] there are people dying because they simply don’t have enough money to see a doctor.”
In 2012, the St Jerome’s Children’s Home was attacked by a gang of machete-wielding robbers. Despite the terrifying ordeal—during which she was dragged from her bed and feared for the lives of the children she was looking after—Ms Steele continued with her work.
Ms Steele now splits her time between Kenya and Scotland, and is travelling back out to St Jerome’s in January.
— St Jerome’s Children’s Home can be contacted at [email protected]. Gemma Steele can be contacted on 0772 4590 992. Gemma’s Orphans will air on BBC Alba on Monday December 29 at 8.25pm
—Read the full version of this story in Dec 19 edition of the SCO in parishes from Friday.
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