This young British woman became the mom to 14 children from Tanzania after she adopted them. She met them while volunteering in an orphanage.
Letty McMaster is 26-year-old woman who was only 18 when she had a scheduled one-month volunteering in Africa which changed her life forever.
She actually stayed for 3 years to offer support to the children she met; when the orphanage closed, she took in nine of the children without homes.
7 years fast forward, she’s living with these children after she legally adopted them. She also adopted 5 more she met on the streets.
They Are my Whole Life
According to Letty, these children are her life and she’s raising them on her own. They help her go through the long hours of trying to juggle everything.
She says how she always had it in her mind that she wants to help homeless children and her family and friends weren’t that much surprised of what she did.
She explains how she’s the parental figure in her home-some of the boys who never had a parental figure see her as their mother; however, a lot of them also consider her their sister as they’re not that much younger.
She says she’s blessed to have 2 families.
Who’s Letty?
Letty had finished her A-levels in 2013 when she went to Tanzania with the plan to become a volunteer at an orphanage for a month or so before going back home for university.
However, after she went there, she realized that there was a lot of mental and physical abuse of these children and she realized that the staff in the orphanage only gave food to the children once per day and used the money donated for them for themselves.
She explains the awful damage being inflicted upon these children and how there was an ongoing cycle of abuse.
Unfortunately, she says how a lot of orphanages function like this-they’re a money-making scheme and the children are exploited.
She Opens Her Own Orphanage
In 2016, when the orphanage was closed by the council, she fought to open her own home for the 9 children left homeless.
She founded the Street Children Iringa as UK registered charity and took in 5 more children.
None of them went to school; however, their lives changed a lot after they moved in with her.
Letty found one of the boys, Eliah, on the streets in the middle of winter with only a T-shirt-his mother had recently passed.
She also runs a safe house that is opened 3 days per week. She provides children from the street with a safe place to get food and other necessities.
There are always children who need help here in Tanzania, emphasizes Letty. Her dream is in the next 5 years to help as many children from the streets as possible and find them homes.
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