Leah is one of the most amazing children my wife Sharon and I have had the privelege to get to know at the Happy Life Mission in Nairobi in Kenya over the past decade. So when we had the offer from artist Christina Major to paint one of the kids to raise money for this incredible program that rescues abandonded babies in Kenya's capital city, it was an easy choice of who to paint.
We're delighted to share that we raised over $5,000 for the Happy Life eduction fund with the stunning painting which has now been hung in the corporate offices of one of Happy Life's main US donors. A massive thanks in particular to our Sherlock Holmes authors that donated their royalties to the project.
'Leah' painting in its new home with one of Happy Life's donors
MX Publishing, Happy Life and the Leah Painting
Our involvement with Happy Life began twelve years ago when Sharon took a career break, retrained as a teacher and spent a month at Happy Life in Nairobi. Sharon returned that Christmas with me in tow and so began an annual visit to spend time with the Happy Life children every December for the next ten years. Through that time we saw Leah grow into a future leader and inspiration to her peers.
Over the years we have run several fundraising projects including supporting the buying of an ambulance to distribute vaccines during COVID and 'books to trees' which saw us raising fund for 1000 trees at the Happy Life Juja Farm location (the home of hte secondary school) - every book sold on our website bought a tree.
We also wrote two editions of
The Happy Life Story which tells the tale of the mission from it's humble beginnings with four kids through to the milestone of one thousand babies rescued.
The incredible Steve White narrated the
audiobook in 2018.
When it came to celebrating a decade of working with Happy Life we were presented with an amazing opportunity by artist Christina Major who had painted a piece for The Art of Sherlock Holmes. That project, mastermined by Phil Growick one of our Holmes novelists, brough together around fifty leading artists from around the world to create pieces of art.
The Woman Returns - Christina Major's painting from Richard Paolinelli's Sherlock Holmes story.
We used one of our From favourite photos of Leah as the base. Christina's works tells stories about the people within the painting with writing overlapping into and on to the painting-resulting in the portrait. The Leah painting tells the story of the first 250 names of children saved from the Happy Life Mission.
The project was supported by Christina's gallery, JF Gallery (Jamnea) in West Palm Beach hosting and hanging the painting and organising all the painting logistics.
Christina has painted many icons over the years including James Dean, Dolly Parton, Elvis, George Michael and many more. You can see all Christina's paintings on the
Christina Major website.
'Leah'
Throughout 2024 we ran a host of fundraising activities including a Kickstarter, GoFundMe and a donation match where our wonderful authors donated their royalites from their Sherlock Holmes books to the project in a matched funding exercise. It was in the autumn of last year we reached the target that enabled us to have the painting housed at the corporate offices.
With our fundraising for our other two main projects - Undershaw school for children with special education needs and The World Food Programme it took our fundraising total for 2024 to over $20,000 - one of our most successful years to date.
By day Steve Emecz works in digital transformation for Tungsten Automation and in his spare time is co-founder of MX Publishing with his wife Sharon. MX Publishing is a social enterprise supporting several projects - About Us.