A couple who went on safari to Kenya are continuing to support some children they met there.

When Dave and Fiona Anderson, of Marina Drive, Minster, visited in 2011 they were introduced to some locals in a small community near Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley.

After becoming friendly with their tour guide Jack Murage and keeping in touch when they returned home, they decided to help the children attend school.

It costs the equivalent of £20 to educate one child for a year, but the parents are poor and struggle to feed their families, so the pair started fundraising and are now helping 15 of them.

Mr Anderson, who works for the Stobart Group at Sheerness Docks, and his wife have also bought uniforms, jumpers and shoes.

The school, Marula primary, is 10km from the huts they live in so they have also bought bikes and after asking the children what they would like, they have provided around 50 text books, in their native Swahili and English.

Other things the grandparents-of-three have paid for include trips to Nairobi for the youngsters and an agricultural show, blankets and clothes for home as well as at school.

To raise funds, the Andersons, who got back from their most recent trip to Kenya last month, have given talks, gone to bootfairs and fetes, sold things on eBay, as well as being given donations.

Mr Anderson, 61, said: “The children don’t start school at five – their trek may take them past buffalo, baboons, pythons and leopards so they start when their parents think they are big enough to cope.

“They realise education is their only way out of poverty.

“We have achieved much more than we ever expected but we need to maintain fundraising to ensure the children have the kind of life we all take for granted.”

A Facebook page called Marula Kids Kenya has now been set up and the couple are hopeful people will donate to help their efforts to improve the life of these Kenyan children.