In 2011, a team of young missionaries arrived in Busia, Kenya for their final three months of a nine-month journey. The team worked in a local church, where they found a very passionate man named Cornel Ojwang. Cornel served as their guide and translator during their stay. After serving for several weeks and doing surface level work in the local community, the team desired to go deeper and take on more challenging needs in the area.
Being a town that is split by the Kenyan/Ugandan border, Busia is home to hundreds of at- risk children, many of whom are homeless. Many of these homeless children, known as street children, are abandoned, neglected, beaten, forced into child labor, or even sold into sex slavery. Knowing this, Cornel led the team out into the area where the street children lived. Upon arrival, the team had to face the reality of what they were seeing - a complete loss of innocence. As this harsh reality was revealed, God put a passion and a vision in the hearts of several of the team members for the restoration of the children. After a short stay and a lengthy team debrief, this band of young visionaries put together a plan.
The plan was to learn about these children, get to know them, and find out how to help them. It started off with visits to the streets and eventually progressed to meeting with the kids in a park nearby on a weekly basis. Over time, trust began to form between the children and the team, and children began to tell their stories and convey their desires to leave the streets. Once the three months came to an end, the team was forced to leave this new ministry in the hands of Cornel.
Shortly after the team's departure, the local church decided they were no longer able to help support the ministry. The future of the ministry rested on Cornel. During this time, Cornel was living in a room smaller than most Americans' closets and working as a computer technician to survive.
The following summer, one of the team members, Haden Hallman, returned to Kenya for 9 months. In that time, the organization became a Community Based Organization, and detailed outreach and follow-up programs were developed. When Haden returned to America the following spring, he registered the organization as a tax-exempt 501c3 non-profit organization in America. Since 2013, SOUL has rescued over 260 children. Haden, along with his wife Blake, live in America but work with Cornel and the team on the ground in Kenya to continue the original calling of rescuing vulnerable children from homelessness and child trafficking.