Giving Back in Ruiru: Inside Jetlak's Annual New Life Home Trust Christmas Event

There is a moment every December that our team looks forward to more than any product launch, sales milestone, or industry award. It is the morning we load up the Jetlak vans with Nuteez, FruitVille, Frosti, and boxes of supplies, and drive to the New Life Home Trust in Ruiru.

New Life Home Trust is a Kenyan charity that provides a home, medical care, and family for abandoned and orphaned babies. Founded in 1994 (the same year Jetlak Foods was established), the organisation runs residential care homes across Kenya, including one in Ruiru, practically in our neighbourhood. They take in babies who have been abandoned at hospitals, police stations, and on the streets, and they provide the love, nutrition, and medical attention these children need to survive and thrive.

Our annual Christmas visit is not a corporate photo opportunity. It is a day that grounds us. It reminds every member of the Jetlak team why we do what we do.

Why New Life Home Trust

The scale of orphan and vulnerable children in Kenya is staggering. According to UNICEF Kenya's most recent data (2022), there are approximately 3.5 million orphans and vulnerable children in the country. "Orphan" in this context includes children who have lost one or both parents, as well as children who have been abandoned or whose parents are unable to care for them.

New Life Home Trust has cared for over 1,800 babies since its founding, according to their published records. Their approach is distinctive. Rather than operating large institutional orphanages, they run small, family-style homes where each baby receives individualised care from a dedicated team of caregivers. The homes are warm, clean, and genuinely loving environments.

The organisation's medical programme is also significant. Many of the babies who arrive at New Life Home Trust are seriously ill, malnourished, or HIV-positive. The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) has documented that abandoned infants in Kenya face mortality rates several times higher than the general infant population. New Life Home Trust provides medical treatment, nutritional rehabilitation, and, for HIV-positive babies, antiretroviral therapy.

The overwhelming majority of children in their care are eventually placed with adoptive families, both within Kenya and internationally. The goal is always to find each child a permanent, loving family.

What Happens on the Day

Our annual visit typically takes place in the second or third week of December. The entire Jetlak team is involved, from factory floor staff to management. We arrive in the morning with a delivery of food products: cases of Nuteez peanut butter (a high-protein food that is particularly valuable for young children's nutrition), cartons of FruitVille juice, Frosti drinks, and other supplies.

The morning is spent with the children. Our team members play with the toddlers, help feed the babies, and interact with the caregivers. For many of our younger staff members, this is the first time they have visited a children's home. The experience is always emotional.

The caregivers at New Life Home Trust are remarkable people. Many of them have worked at the home for years, caring for baby after baby with patience, tenderness, and skill. They know each child's personality, preferences, and medical needs. Watching them work is humbling.

After time with the children, we share a meal together. The staff from New Life Home Trust and the Jetlak team sit together, eat together, and talk. These conversations are often the most meaningful part of the day. We hear stories about babies who arrived weighing barely a kilogram and are now thriving. We hear about children who have been adopted into loving families. We also hear about the challenges: funding shortfalls, medical emergencies, and the never-ending stream of new babies who need help.

Nutrition and Early Childhood

The connection between Jetlak's work and New Life Home Trust's mission is more than geographic proximity. Nutrition is at the heart of both.

The first 1,000 days of a child's life (from conception to age two) are widely recognised by public health experts as the most critical period for nutritional development. The Lancet's 2013 Maternal and Child Nutrition series established that inadequate nutrition during this window is associated with irreversible stunting, impaired cognitive development, and increased disease susceptibility throughout life.

For abandoned babies, the nutritional challenge is acute. Many arrive malnourished, underweight, and with weakened immune systems. The high-quality, protein-rich foods that New Life Home Trust provides in their rehabilitation programme can make the difference between a child who thrives and one who does not.

Peanut butter, specifically, plays a meaningful role in therapeutic and supplementary feeding programmes for malnourished children worldwide. The WHO recommends peanut-based ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF) as a frontline treatment for severe acute malnutrition. While Nuteez is a commercial product rather than a therapeutic one, its high protein and calorie density make it a valuable food for growing children.

Beyond the Annual Visit

Our relationship with New Life Home Trust extends beyond the December event. Throughout the year, we provide product donations when requested and support specific needs as they arise. Several Jetlak team members have become regular individual volunteers at the Ruiru home.

We also support other community initiatives in the Ruiru area. Ruiru has been our home since 1994. Our factory is here. Many of our employees live here. Their children attend schools here. When the community does well, we do well.

Corporate social responsibility is a phrase that can sometimes feel hollow. Companies make donations, take photographs, publish them on social media, and move on. We try to approach it differently. Our community involvement is personal because our community is personal. We are not a multinational corporation parachuting into a distant location for visibility. We are a Kenyan family business giving back to the neighbourhood we have been part of for over 30 years.

What the Children Teach Us

The children at New Life Home Trust do not know about supply chains, marketing strategies, or quarterly targets. They know about warmth, food, faces, and laughter. Spending a day with them recalibrates your sense of what matters.

Every jar of Nuteez that leaves our factory ultimately exists to nourish someone. When we see that jar being opened in a children's home, spooned onto bread for a toddler who was once fighting for survival, the work we do every day at the factory takes on a different weight.

Our team members frequently say that the New Life Home Trust visit is the highlight of their year. It is not because they enjoy giving (though they do). It is because the experience connects them to the purpose behind their daily work.

How You Can Help

If this story moves you, there are several ways to support New Life Home Trust directly. They accept financial donations through their website and bank transfer. They welcome volunteers for their care homes across Kenya. They need supplies ranging from baby formula and nappies to medical equipment and children's clothing.

You do not need to be a company to make a difference. A single individual visiting a children's home, bringing a bag of supplies, or making a modest monthly donation contributes to a safety net that saves lives.

According to UNICEF's 2023 report on child welfare in Kenya, community-based support for orphaned and vulnerable children, including informal fostering, material support, and volunteer caregiving, plays a role that formal systems alone cannot fill. The report notes that community and family-based care models produce significantly better developmental outcomes for children compared to institutional care.

Looking Ahead

December will come again. The vans will be loaded. The team will gather. And we will make the short drive from our factory to New Life Home Trust, carrying Nuteez, FruitVille, Frosti, and the same commitment we have carried every year.

Some traditions are worth keeping. This is one of ours.

At Jetlak Foods, we make food for Kenyan families. Some of those families are built in the traditional way. Some are built in children's homes by caregivers who chose to love someone else's child as their own. All of them deserve nourishment, quality, and care.

That is what we are here for.