A busy charity celebrated a special anniversary with a gathering at Dukinfield Town Hall. 

Gap Kenya, set up 10 years ago, helps street children in Mombasa and also runs a project that works with mothers and children living on a municipal rubbish dump in the hills above the city. 

It is run by Gayle and Paul Woods from Ashton. 

To celebrate the amazing work the charity undertakes, Gayle and Paul held a special event at the town hall to present 10 years of working with vulnerable people in Kenya. 

Paul said: "We work with street children in Mombasa and run a project that works with mothers and children living on the Mwakirunge dumpsite up in the hills above Mombasa. 

"We celebrate 10 years of impacting their lives this year and held an event at Dukinfield Town Hall to celebrate. We have seen some amazing transformations and plan to see many more in the future." 

Gap Kenya began in 2011 when Paul and Gayle went on holiday to Mombasa. There they came across children who were living and trying to survive on the streets. 

Since then, many children and mothers have been helped by Gap Kenya. 

In 2012, The Stepping Stones Centre was opened to help children living on the streets of Mombasa. 

The children can attend the centre on a daily basis and are provided with three meals a day, can shower, have their clothes washed and have educational lessons, play games and have fun.

Most importantly, Paul said they are shown love, discipline and are helped to understand how special they are. 

The purpose of the centre is to help the children see the potential to change their lives and Gap Kenya is on hand to help them do so. 

Some of the children are able to return to their homes with support from the charity, while others are able to live in good children's homes or in a Gap Kenya foster home. 

The charity also opened up The Joseph Centre in 2017 to help mothers and children living and scavenging on the dump in Mwakirunge. 

Gap Kenya provides literacy and numeracy classes for the mums alongside tailoring lessons. 

They are taught how to make bags, throws and cushion covers which are then sold to buy food and other essential items. They also make school uniforms. 

The charity also sends more than 40 of the mothers' children to school, providing uniforms, shoes and books, while the younger children are cared for in a creche. 

Gap Kenya currently employs 11 members of staff working across the two centres and the foster family home - five full-time and six part-time members. 

To find out more about Gap Kenya, visit gapkenya.com 

Images from the event at Dukinfield Town Hall by Nigel Wood 

Read more from the Tameside Reporter

Click here for more of the latest news

Click here to read the latest edition of the paper online

Click here to find out where you can pick up a copy of the paper