FAYETTEVILLE — Raise a glass, change a life.

On Friday, Winetopia will be held at Pratt Place Barn in Fayetteville. The wine-tasting event will benefit Restore Humanity, a nonprofit organization based in Fayetteville that operates an orphanage in Kenya.

Currently, 16 children live in the orphanage. When it opened in August 2010, the orphanage was home to 10 orphans, but that number has grown because of events such as Winetopia.

“We were able to add three kids because we were so successful last year,” says Restore Humanity’s founder Sarah Fennel of Fayetteville. “We want to be ahead of the game before we move anyone [else] in.”

The orphanage is in western Kenya on land donated by the Opot family. It has space for 20 children, and Fennel is hopeful that a strong turnout at Winetopia can allow four more orphans to move in by early 2013.

Restore Humanity built the orphanage when it renovated an existing building on the Opot family’s land, using donated money that came almost exclusively from Northwest Arkansas.

Fennel is one of the orphanage’s managing directors. She talks to the other directors every week, and strives to make it to Kenya twice a year; she’s planning to be there in December and January.

She says she has been amazed by the ongoing generosity of people in Northwest Arkansas. Some donations to Restore Humanity are from corporations, while others are from individuals who hear about the organization’s mission and decide to give $25 or whatever they can spare.

“Wherever I go in Northwest Arkansas, people want to talk about it,” she says. “We have a great communityhere. A lot of people want to support something local. Even though the kids are over there, they know me and they know Restore Humanity. It’s something they can connect to.”

Restore Humanity’s origins date to 2005, when Fennel, then a teacher, went on a four-month volunteer trip to South Africa. There, she worked in a children’s home and a hospice. She saw some nonprofits that were doing great work, but others “not so much.”

When she returned to Northwest Arkansas, her students and other people in the community showed concern about the stories she told. More than that, she recalls, they wanted to do something about the situation.

So in 2006, she founded Restore Humanity.

“The more that I talked about my experience, the more people in Northwest Arkansas said, ‘What are we going to do?’” she says. “So I was placedin a position between people I wanted to help and people who wanted to help. It all came from there.”

Originally, Restore Humanity was going to donate goods to South Africa, but just two days before its first shipment of clothes was to be sent, the nation’s government said it would no longer accept the donation of used clothes. Restore Humanity wound up donating those clothes to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

In retrospect, Fennel says, that change was a blessing in disguise. Today, the money Restore Humanity raises is spent on the ground in Kenya - in addition to the orphanage, it supports more than 200 children through its outreach program, providingthem with everything from school supplies and fees to mattresses and medicine. In going this route, the organization avoids high customs tariffs, which would limit its impact, Fennel says.

“That has actually worked better,” Fennel says. “We can do a lot more with the money we raise.”

Winetopia will last from 7-10 p.m. Friday. It will feature wines from around the world, as well as a beer table and cuisine from four local restaurants. There is also a silent auction.

Tickets are $75.

“It’s a great event, a lot of fun,” Fennel says. “You walk in and get a glass of wine with our logo on it. People have a really good time.” For more information about Restore Humanity’s Winetopia, call (479) 841-2841 or visit

restorehumanity.org

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Northwest Profile, Pages 33 on 10/07/2012