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The Falconer Trust

At Wareham URC we have been
supporting The Falconer Trust for years,
if not decades!

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On November 16 we held our annual
fundraiser, raising over £250 by showing
the charity’s latest video before tucking
into a two course lunch. It is always great to see developments at
the orphanage, how they are constantly looking to improve
children’s lives and increase the project’s sustainability.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Trust, the back story is
fascinating and inspiring.

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Lilias Falconer was born on July 15 1915 in Manchester. At the
age of 15 she was telling her family of the call on her life to go to
Africa “to look after babies and children”. In order to fulfil her
vision, she applied to medical agencies to train as a nurse but her
applications were refused. In 1939 at the start of World War 2 she
was accepted into nursing training by the Salvation Army and
began her nursing career in a leper hospital in Chitokoloki,
Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in 1946. There she saw the
plight of little babies left to die when their mothers died in
childbirth. After agreeing to care for one such child, five more were
brought to her over the next 18 months. So, with her six babies,
Lilias left Chitokoloki and went further into the bush where she
established her Children’s Home and Orphanage at another
Christian mission station in the small community of Kabulamema
in 1947.

During those years at Kabulamema she saved over 600 babies, an
average of one a month for fifty years! She only came back to the
UK once in all those years, in 1952. Miss Falconer, ‘Mama’ to her
family, died on 6th June 1998.

It was her wish that the work would be carried on by her children
and the success story of the Home is that some of the children

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