Joan Dixon was a HATW Superstar. She volunteered about 13 times over a period of 13 years at Pandipieri Centre in Kisumu, Kenya – the mission started by Father Hans Burgman whose life inspired many of us here at HATW. Originally a nurse, then nursing tutor and later trained by Cruse and Winston’s Wish as a bereavement counsellor for children, Joan helped many children affected by the HIV pandemic in Kenya. Joan died in her 80s in 2023, and we were delighted to receive in her Will a large legacy to support the work of HATW.
Joan’s story
Following one of her many trips to Kisumu, she wrote:
‘It was a delight to return to Kisumu.
Over many years I have worked alongside the child counsellors – training, supervising, mentoring their work with children in schools/home and communities.
A planned month of activities was prepared which included special time with the counsellors and visits to schools. Many schools had recently completed training in social and personal development – with issues around childhood development and mentoring of individual children, and I had the pleasure of handing out certificates to individual teachers and hearing from them how they had valued their time with Pandipieri trainers and school counsellors.
Comments such as these were to me a great joy – “We have now much more idea how to cope with the different problems we face daily”; “It has made a big difference to our relationships in the teachers’ daily schedules”.
The standard of training and support for the community/schools/youth groups is to be further developed this year. A large house, built in 2001 with the help of HATW volunteers for the residential care of young boys, is no longer in use as such, and has been refurbished into a children’s centre with integrated services for the large community. It will be open Monday to Friday and provide professional support to nurseries, schools, youth clubs and individual parents.
It has been a great joy for me to return often – to see the improvements in infant mortality rate, the developments in the HIV/AIDS programmes, and especially the nurturing of the children.’