Anne-Marie Tipper, a therapist from Berkshire who co-founded a children’s home in Kenya, has worked for years under the radar.
But this month she and her colleagues found themselves catapulted into the spotlight after being nominated as one of the 15 causes the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — also known as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry — have highlighted on their Instagram account.
Tipper has since been doing global media interviews and told the BBC on Aug. 19 that she hopes the endorsement will mean they can increase awareness and help more children.
Tipper set up the organisation, called Rafiki Mwema, after visiting Kenya in 2005 and finding that children who had survived sexual and physical abuse were not getting the support they needed in orphanages.
She decided to put her professional skills to use and raised funding for a therapeutic play centre to help them deal with trauma, followed by a children’s home which now looks after 70 children.
The success of Rafiki Mwema has led to another form of Royal endorsement of sorts, as one of the young people the organisation worked with, Peter Njuguna, recently trained as a chef in the UK before being offered a job at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst.
Meghan and Harry put out a call to their 9.3 million Instagram followers last month asking them to recommend causes that were worthy of more attention. Taking those suggestions on board, they chose 15 organisations hailing from all over the world that they then boosted with a follow and a photo.
Each organisation has been nominated for being a “force for change.”
They include Art of Hope, a nonprofit providing art therapy for Syrian refugees in Lebanon; a bee conservation charity called Beecause; and a rehabilitation programme called Pawsitive Change that pairs rescue dogs with inmates from Californian prisons.
Another UK-based initiative the Royal couple chose is Tiny Tickers – a six-person team working with health care professionals to increase early detection of heart conditions in newborns and infants. The charity has since said that they saw a huge increase in social media activity within hours as a result of the Instagram recognition.
“It was a wonderful surprise to have been chosen by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as one of their 15 Forces for Change charities,” Jon Arnold, CEO of Tiny Tickers, said.
“Already we’ve seen a tremendous increase in awareness of the charity, our work, and the CHD cause globally.”
This is the first month of the awareness-raising initiative — with much more to come over the rest of the year.