It was a Friday night, 30 June 2023
At Londiani Junction, a lorry lost control and crashed into the roadside stalls. Fifty-two people lost their lives. More than thirty others were left with injuries that would change their lives for ever.
Londiani Sub-County Hospital, the nearest public hospital, had no accident and emergency unit. The nearest one was fifty kilometres away, and too far for people in that condition. So the injured were laid on the floor of the outpatient area, and the nurses and clinicians fought through the night with everything they had.
That night has never left us. Exactly one year ago today, a building opened on that same hospital site. Last night, in the Round Room of Dublin’s Mansion House, it brought Brighter Communities Worldwide the Small Charity, Big Impact award at the 2026 Charity Excellence Awards, hosted by Charities Institute Ireland and sponsored by Ecclesiastical Insurance Ireland.
This is the story of how a night of darkness became Living Hope, and it belongs to far more people than the ones who stood on a stage.
The days after
In the days that followed, we did what we could, alongside the County Government of Kericho, the Red Cross and the churches. We put up tents, arranged food and protective equipment, supported the hospital team, helped with funerals and sat with families in their grief. Children had lost parents. A whole community was traumatised. It was solidarity in its simplest form: showing up, staying, and walking hand in hand with people on the worst night of their lives.
We have kept walking with those families in solidarity. Today, 47 students affected by the tragedy, eight of them now in third-level education, are still in school because of the generosity of our supporters.
A question that wouldn’t go away
Then, as the shock began to ease, a harder question surfaced in our conversations with the hospital team and with colleagues in Ireland: how do we make sure we are better prepared next time?
In one of those early conversations, with colleagues from Mayo University Hospital, including surgeon Dr Bridget Hughes, the first plans for a centre were sketched, quite literally, on the back of an envelope. It began as a simple resuscitation room. As we talked and planned, it grew into the vision of a dedicated emergency and trauma centre.
Solidarity is the word we keep coming back to. Living Hope was not built to be a monument. It was built as an act of solidarity with a community that had lost so much, and with the hospital team who had given everything that night.
A friendship older than the building
That conversation was possible because of a friendship, and a solidarity, that is older than the centre itself. For more than 20 years, Mayo University Hospital, the University of Galway, Londiani Sub-County Hospital and BCW have worked together as the West of Ireland–Kenya Partnership. It began informally in 2004, when Mayo staff first joined our community work in Londiani, and became a formal hospital-to-hospital partnership in 2008.
Since then, health professionals and students from Ireland and Kenya have travelled in both directions to train, teach and learn side by side. When Londiani and Mayo teams ran trauma workshops together, they were building the skills that Living Hope now relies on. And the learning has never been one-way. Our Irish colleagues tell us how much Kenya has taught them about resilience, creativity and humility. That is what solidarity looks like when it is real: it runs in both directions.
Building hope, brick by brick
Construction began in July 2024, around the first anniversary of the tragedy, with a groundbreaking attended by the County’s Health Minister, Hon. Brenda Bii. More than 300 individual donors and eight institutional funders in Ireland, Kenya and beyond raised €165,000. Many gave in memory of those who were lost. Many followed the project from the first photographs of foundations to the first photographs of patients.
There were solar panels for equipment and hot water, rainwater tanks, ten emergency beds, a minor theatre, ambulance bays and covered walkways to the main hospital. Every one of those things stands for someone who gave.
6 November 2025: a day of remembrance and hope
On 6 November 2025, the Living Hope Emergency & Trauma Centre was officially opened by H.E. Caitríona Ingoldsby, Ambassador of Ireland to Kenya, together with the Governor of Kericho County, H.E. Dr Erick Kipkoech Mutai. Beside them were families who lost loved ones in 2023, the health workers who had given everything that night, and the community who had walked the whole road with us.
It was a day of remembrance as much as celebration. Trees were planted for life, strength and renewal, and in memory of those who were lost. A ribbon was cut. And we handed custodianship of the centre to the board, staff and community of Londiani Sub-County Hospital, with a promise to keep walking beside them in solidarity.
What Living Hope is doing now
A building does not save lives on its own. People do. Eleven clinicians have completed American Heart Association-certified Basic Life Support and Advanced Cardiac Life Support courses, and 253 health workers have received continuing education in trauma management, patient safety and emergency response.
Trauma care begins long before the hospital doors. It begins on the road, in the marketplace, in the village, with the first person who knows what to do. That is why Remote Emergency Care
training is equipping boda boda riders, Community Health Promoters, police officers and neighbours to act in the golden hour.
Since opening, the centre has treated more than 700 patients for road traffic injuries, burns, poisonings and other medical emergencies. Behind each number is a family who did not have to face that emergency alone.
We know this is a new service at an early stage, and that its strength will depend on training, mentoring and learning from real cases. The County Government has allocated staff and the hospital board is responsible for running the centre. We will keep walking with them.
Because of you
The award was entered as the story of a small charity. The story really belongs to Londiani. It belongs to the hospital team who responded that night and helped shape the answer, to our colleagues and partners in Kenya, and to the donors, volunteers and health professionals in Ireland and Kenya, including our friends at Mayo University Hospital and the University of Galway.
We thank every one of you, including Irish Aid, Earl Ferrers, Friends of Kipkelion, Harleys Ltd, the JP McManus Charitable Foundation, the Mayo University Hospital staff team, Medsurge, Moneenatieve Windfarm Ltd, Response Med, Self Help Africa, SHARP, Surgeon Noonan, Tralee Lions Club, the Mercy Sisters, and the countless supporters of BCW.
Living Hope is a promise honoured, and a commitment to keep standing in solidarity.
A promise to families that emergency care will be faster, safer and more dignified.
A promise to health workers that they will have the tools and skills they need.
A promise to a community that out of tragedy can come transformation.
Because of your solidarity, lives will be saved. Because of you, hope now stands where despair once did.
Thank you for believing, for giving, and for walking this journey with us.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh. Asante sana.
