WOMAN PROVIDES HELPING HAND FOR AFRICAN ORPHANS

Los Gatos Charity Seeks Funds To Help Children Escape Life On The Streets

The video is as shocking as it is heartbreaking. A 10-year-old Kenyan
orphan stands on a street corner in Nairobi, one hand outstretched begging
for food from a passerby, the other holding a jug of cement glue hard
against his nostrils. He sniffs the fumes as if his life depended on it.

The chemical high numbs the hunger pangs and despair the youngster faces
each day as he tries to cope with grinding poverty and homelessness, and in
some cases physical beatings and sexual abuse. He is one of an estimated
500,000 homeless children who live on the streets in the villages and
cities of Kenya.

Marilyn Cohn of Los Gatos is working hard to change that. After visiting
the Congo, Uganda and Kenya and seeing and filming the street children, the
former social worker and teacher founded Chosen Children International
three years ago to help feed, rehabilitate and educate the youngsters. She
uses the haunting video to help raise funds for the group.

Most of the street children are orphans of Africa's sweeping AIDS epidemic,
which has left them without parents or any adult who can look after them.
Most will end up addicted to glue. Many will go on to contract AIDS.

Cohn became interested in their plight more than a decade ago when she
began financially supporting an orphaned Ugandan girl and exchanging
letters with her. She was able to visit the girl in the mid-1990s and,
while walking the streets of several African cities, saw the
heart-wrenching condition of the street children. She could not get them
out of her mind. She returned and photographed the depressing scene.

"I had a vision where I saw myself as a Pied Piper leading little African
children from the streets," she said. "I saw land where we were growing food."

The vision spurred her to action. In January 2000, she formed the
non-denominational Christian CCI, virtually on her own. With $75,000 raised
so far, Cohn has been able to set up a rehabilitation center in Kitale,
about 200 miles from Nairobi, where street children are offered meals,
classes in language and math, a plot of land to grow vegetables, and a
chance to kick their glue habit. The current center accommodates 20 to 25
children and is not a residential center, but Cohn hopes someday soon to
build a facility where homeless children can be housed.

CCI also hopes to expand its humanitarian work into other African countries
where neglected children live on the street.

Cohn says there are many reasons besides AIDS why children land on the
street. Some are true orphans who lost their parents to other diseases.
Others have been abandoned by their poverty-stricken families because they
cannot feed them, forcing the youngsters to beg or become prostitutes.
Still others are runaways, fleeing abusive home environments.

Cohn travels to Africa about twice a year, staying for two to three months
to help run the center with a handful of Kenyan teachers and counselors.
When she's home in the United States, she runs the organization -- pitching
for funds at churches and community groups and writing a newsletter about
her work -- out of her small Los Gatos apartment. She has a little
volunteer help, but Cohn virtually runs the organization by herself.
Financial support comes mainly from individuals, she says. She has not
received grants or corporate funding.

The "Children's Village" Cohn hopes to build will also have a working farm
and a trade school to teach the youngsters useful skills. She is preparing
to return to Africa at the end of this month to continue her work.

[SIDEBAR]

For more information about Chosen Children International, visit
http://ccikids.com. To volunteer, call (650) 537-0213; to donate funds,
write to CCI, Box 2182, Los Gatos, Calif. 95031-2182.