Heather Bellamy spoke with Becky Murray, Co-founder of One by One.

Heather: How often are you in Kenya?

Becky: It's almost every other month, so five to six times every year.

Heather: Is it home from home? How have the locals accepted you?

Becky: That's been an interesting journey. When I first started there, I was known as the White Witch. I was the White Witch not because they thought I was a good witch, but because my skin colour is white in a village full of black people.

I wasn't very liked. I was very much the outsider and they were very sceptical of why we were there wanting to help their children and so that was quite difficult. I thought everybody loved missionaries and I thought everyone would love me. I'm here opening up a home and a school to help their local kids and I thought everyone would love that; apparently not.

It's been through the little things that I've seen barriers begin to come down. Simple things like trying to learn bits of their tribal language, where suddenly this white woman's coming along speaking a language they know. Then sitting with them in their mud huts drinking their tea, which sometimes would land me back in Derby hospital, but just sitting with them eating their food, wearing their clothes and being one of them, suddenly starts to bring the barriers down.

The greatest thing was when they saw the children beginning to change; children who were once a burden on their society, who would once steal, suddenly being role models in our community. As they saw that, then all of a sudden the reputation began to change. So now beautifully, my nick-name there is 'Mamma Bumala.' Bumala is the name of the village, so I've gone from being the 'White Witch,' to the 'mother of the village', which is pretty good. I'll take that.

Heather: Do you work with other people in that village; other authorities, if there are authorities? It's not just you going in as a white woman from England, bringing English money, or American money?

Becky: Yes. All the people we employ at the children's home and the school are local people. We believe very strongly in investing into the local community there.

We're also looking at ways of making the children's home become more self-sustainable, so just this year we've launched our first chicken farm. Firstly, we've done that to give our children an egg a day. Many of our children haven't got great nutrition, because of years of malnutrition before joining us, so we want to give every child an egg a day. Then we also want to give all of our families of the children who come from the local area, who our social workers have defined as the poorest families, we want to give them all a four week old hen, because that's when it's at the point of laying eggs. We're doing that to try and empower local families. Then the third part of the chicken farm is to start selling eggs and chicks and start raising profits from within Kenya to help support the children, so it's not all going to be based on funds coming in from the UK.

Heather: What is your stand out memory in the journey so far with 'One by One'?

Becky: A little boy called David. His mummy had died when he was four years old and his father lived and worked away. I didn't meet David until he was nine. So for five years he had lived entirely alone.

Kenya is such a beautiful community of people, that I know if a child was struggling by themselves, then the local neighbours would help. So I wanted to go and see his house, because I couldn't quite fathom how a little boy could live entirely isolated.

We went on this little motorbike for a couple of kilometres. I remember the motorbike stopping and the driver saying, "You're going to have to walk from here." So I walked through brambles and bushes waist high to get to this isolated mud hut. I opened the door of David's house for the first time and the smell just hit me. It smelt so damp and rotten and all there was in this mud hut was a little mattress on the floor that was absolutely wet through and this is where this little boy was living.