History of Rafiki Mwema

How it all began

In the beginning

In 2011, Anne-Marie Tipper — a play therapist who had spent years working with traumatised children in Kenya — opened a small house in Nakuru for girls going through the court system. Children who had survived the most serious abuse and needed somewhere safe to stay while justice was pursued. She called it Rafiki Mwema — “loyal friend” in Swahili. In their first week, the house was home to 22 girls.

Sarah Rosborg had known Anne-Marie for several years by then. Sarah ran Castle Design, a web design company in Australia, and had built Anne-Marie’s website for free — as she did for many charities she believed in. She remembers working on it with her newborn daughter Lovisa in a baby carrier, and asking Anne-Marie not to send her the stories of the girls just yet. She had just become a mother. The weight of what those children had survived was more than she could hold in those early weeks.

When the house opened and the funding ran out, Anne-Marie reached out again. She needed help raising money to keep the doors open.

Sarah said yes.

She gathered a small group of friends — Claire, Nicci, and her best friend Jandy — and asked if they would join a board with her. They said yes. Sarah ran an auction, working day and night for weeks, and raised $17,000. But even as she celebrated, she could see the problem clearly: a lump sum doesn’t keep a home open. The children needed consistency. So Rafiki Mwema Australia was born — a registered Australian charity with the infrastructure, the fundraising, and the systems to give the work in Kenya a sustainable future.

That is how two women, one in Kenya and one in Australia, built something that neither could have built alone.

From that rented house, Rafiki Mwema has grown into something none of us could have imagined in those early days.

Today, Rafiki Mwema is home to up to 70 children across five therapeutic houses — two girls’ houses, two boys’ houses, and a special needs house — as well as more than 200 children who have left our care and returned safely to family in their communities through our Outreach Program (as of 2025).

Along the way we have:

installed two video links in local courts in Kenya which is massive because a) they are the first in Kenya EVER!, and b) it protects our children from having to sit meters away from their perpetrators; acquired a farm for our growing family upon which we grow our own crops which allows us to feed all the houses, sell the excess at the market and take crops to the outreach families who live in extreme poverty;
built “Queens Castle”; the girls’ house and “Kings Castle”; the boys’ house;
built Rafiki Jasiri, a school on our farm for our smallest girls for whom are in too much danger to leave our farm due to current court proceedings;
launched Rafiki Social (Break the cycle. Build the future) to help our children who leave us or graduate to move into adulthood and back into the communities where they will build their futures.
atarted our Rafiki Feeding Program where we initially started by providing one meal each day and valuable human connection through games of football and sharing food to the children living on the street.
updated from the feeding program to Rafiki Mtaani which is now a huge part of what we do and we are available to our family on the street 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Working together to change the lives of these children in Kenya with the love, respect and empathy and they deserve.