Where We Work
Kenya
The majority of Feed The Poor’s work is based in the slums of Soweto Nairobi. The work has grown out of a feeding programme for child victims of HIV/AIDS and has branched out to different parts of the city and the country, Bondo, Jebrock and Havoco. Some of the projects are:
Home-based Care: Household visits are organised on a weekly basis. The purpose of these visits is to assess how household members are coping with HIV/AIDS and to offer assistance where necessary to help tackle the daily challenges such as food, medication, psychosocial support /counselling. A food basket is given to families whose breadwinner is bedridden, for the period that he/she will be bedridden and stopped as soon as the person is able to provide for the family. A food basket usually consists of cooking fat, maize meal, sugar, tea bags, millet flour, beans, maize and rice. The quantities given depend on the size of the family. An example of this is Ms Catherine Omukanda Indechi who is currently being closely monitored by social workers from the home based care program. For a long time the 34 year old woman has been suffering from HIV in silence which has drastically affected her health. The hearing impaired woman whose Cd4 count stands at 300 is rapidly regaining her former health back. Health care interventions form an integral core of this programme.
Feeding Program: Feed The Poor have 2 feeding centres amongst Nairobi’s underprivileged communities and 1 in Bondo Western Kenya. Food is provided to children who are either affected or infected with HIV/AIDS and adult breadwinners who are bedridden as a result of HIV/AIDS or cancer. The feeding program has two components wet feeding and food baskets. 305 Children are provided a cooked lunch Monday to Friday, besides the feeding their health is monitored and we ensure that they receive vitamin A and tape worm tablets every six months and emergency immunisation in collaboration with the Kayole Sub-district hospital.
Education program: The school was started in 2010; children who enrolled on the Feeding Programme were not attending school. They could not afford to pay the extra charges that were being charged on top of the school fees. These are for extra coaching which has been made compulsory by teachers who claim that the current class sizes in primary schools ranging from 50-90 pupils is too large for them to handle. The cost for these extra lessons on average is £10.
A decision was taken to start up a school that the slum dwellers could comfortably afford. The school charges a small fee (£3.20) to make the parents shoulder some responsibility; this is a lot less than the government charges.
The school has a kindergarten ages 3-6 and primary from class one to class five. The children are provided with a holistic education that builds them mentally, physically, emotionally to ensure that they end up to be responsible adults in the community and role models to other children in the slum. The school follows the national curriculum and is not affiliated to any religious grouping. Admission is open to both boys and girls below the age of 16. Besides education the children are provided with guidance, counselling and are also involved in community projects such as cleaning up the neighbourhood. Hawa Wanjiku a child previously exposed to dangers like rape, kidnapping, road accidents while roaming around the slum areas doing odd jobs like collecting scrap metals now has a safe environment to study.
Tuition fees: Feed The Poor provide education scholarships and bursaries to bright students from poor families. Two beneficiaries of the program, Sophia Wanjiru and Saddam Hussein completed their High school successfully and are now awaiting placement in one of Kenya’s public Universities. Austin Omondi who finished High school two years ago volunteers as a Communications Officer for Angaza Child Trust while his brother Brian Otieno who also finished at the same time is a volunteer teacher at Angaza Preparatory school. Please help us with Kenya school appeal or join the walk for education
Water for the Poor: Access to clean water remains a great challenge to most marginalised communities in both slum and rural areas. Feed The Poor, have dug bore holes for the Jebrock community in Western Kenya, Havoco community in Nyanza and installed water storage tanks in the Umoja and Spring Valley mosques. The Jebrock and Havoco communities have for a long time depended on untreated rain and river water both for drinking and domestic use. The people who previously had challenges in accessing clean water and were vulnerable to water borne diseases like cholera now have a reason to smile.
The Qurbani/Audhia and the Iftari projects: In 2012 for Qurbani/Audhia we slaughtered a total of 70 goats; the meat was distributed at Soweto mosque to 200 families with an average of 5 people per family thus a total of 1000 people. For Iftari we reached a total of 130 families with an average of 5 people per household thus a total of 650 people, providing them with rice, beans, maize flour, cooking fat, sugar, tea leaves and maize.
Self-help: A fish and chicken farm has been started in Ruai on the outskirts of Nairobi to generate income for the projects, plus vegetables are grown to supplement the feeding programmes. The youth programme is providing much needed skills and ideas to start small self-help businesses making shoes and jewellery.
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