Tag Archives: kenya

Shelley Callahan | July 7, 2016En Español

School lets out every day at 4 o’clock at Dandora Community Center, but the kids tend to hang around until long after 6.

Luis pointed it out to me when we returned to the school after visiting the Dandora slum — children milled about on the property, still playing games with one another, even though school had been over for quite some time.

Sheltering the most vulnerable

Dandora provides meals, healthcare, and an education for children in Kenya.

About 400 children attend school at the Dandora Community Center. The school serves children from primary all the way to high school, but not everyone can afford education. The cost of education is high in Kenya, and even higher if children are in need of boarding because they have no home. Forty-five children board here, all orphans with no family at all, making them among the most vulnerable in the city.

Since social services don’t exist on a government level, the administrators at schools such as St. John’s and Dandora take it upon themselves to seek out these youths. It makes you wonder what life must be like for the children who aren’t found in the slums, who wander the streets lost and alone, with no guidance in life.

It’s not hard to imagine why the children linger. Their homes, if they have them, are in the slums. It’s very dark and crowded, and there is little to do as the day turns to night. Staying at school is not only appealing, but it’s also the best option. At school, your friends are there to make you laugh, and your teachers motivate you. It’s a safe place to escape the crushing weight and real physical danger of the slums. I wouldn’t run home after school either.

Healthcare for everyone

Luis and I are at the Dandora Community Center to check out recent renovations to the clinic that Children Incorporated funded back in March. The clinic has been under renovation ever since, so the children and the community have not had access to it, but it will be up and running soon. Getting the doors open again is important because the children have nowhere else to go for the treatment of colds, stomach issues, or wounds. Left untreated, very common illnesses could cause major complications or even death. In the slums, there are no other options for treatment — the few clinics like this one are the only way anyone will ever get medical help.

And it’s not just minor ailments and injuries — Kenyans have to worry about diseases, like dengue and malaria, that most Westerners never have to think about at home. It is a major public health problem in this region — and it is scary to think about.

It’s the only place they can get help — and get away from the weight of poverty and hopelessness.

Simple items like mosquito nets can make the difference between getting an education or fighting for your life. Children who are healthy can go to school — if they can afford it. Those who are stricken with malaria or dengue simply lie on cots and hope just to survive.

Those nets keep the mosquitoes — and thus the diseases — at bay, but they are hard to come by in the slum. Each year, Children Incorporated sends funds to Dandora to provide mosquito nets. They have a major impact at a minor cost; each net costs less than $10. Our goal is to purchase 1,200 of them this year.

Filling in the cracks

Throughout the day as we visit the Dandora Center, we speak with James Ngura, our volunteer coordinator, about the challenges he faces. James explains to us that his biggest obstacle is the workload — keeping up the finances and raising more funds at the same time is a major undertaking. I am not surprised to hear this — James and the staff at Dandora work tirelessly to grow their programs — especially those services provided at the clinic.

As we enter the clinic, it’s easy to see how hard they’ve been working. The building is beautiful. It looks almost new with a fresh coat of paint and new tiles on the floors. I’m reminded of the renovations at the Montero school we visited in Bolivia. The upgrades aren’t just cosmetic — they make it possible for our volunteer partners to help more children. If funding continues, the renovations at Dandora will allow James and his team to double the number of patients the clinic can see in the next year.

The clinic building and Dandora as a whole are almost a respite site for the children here. It’s the only place they can get help — and get away from the weight of poverty and hopelessness. And while the team is working to fix the cracks in the clinic walls, they’re also working to fix the cracks in children’s lives. It’s a long and difficult process, but even before it’s complete, the results are becoming clear.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN KENYA?

You can sponsor a child in Kenya in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Kenya that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | July 7, 2016

Luis and I landed in Nairobi around 6 p.m. As we drove through the city from the airport to get to our hotel, I was surprised to see how developed Nairobi was, especially compared to Addis Ababa. Huge billboards selling bottled water towered over newly built roads, and the sidewalks were lined with green landscaping. We passed tall, gleaming buildings in the city’s business district which reminded me of an American city.

MILES AND MILES

What did not remind me of America was the trip to St. John’s Community Center the next morning. Traffic in Nairobi is terrible at most times of day, and it took us two-and-a-half hours to drive 4 km. On the way, we passed one of the many slums in Nairobi — the Pumwani slum — which we would be visiting later that day. The slum seemed to go on forever as we drove past. For miles we saw shacks crammed together in tight rows.

The city of Nairobi is popularly known as the “Green City in the Sun,” but driving through the endless Pumwani slums, the poverty is heartbreaking, even compared to slums in Addis Ababa and to refugee camps in Uganda. I started to feel overwhelmed, as though maybe I wasn’t prepared for what we were going to see.

Forty years of service

St. John’s Community Center is a primary school located directly across from the Pumwani slums. When we arrived, we met our coordinator, Peter, who is the director of the school. Peter is a soft-spoken and kind man in his 40s, with a boyish face and wide grin. He and Luis have been working together for a long time — St. John’s is one of our oldest affiliate schools internationally. For more than 40 years, Children Incorporated has sponsored children here.

The school enrolls 200 children on a yearly basis. Children not only learn academics, but are also taught trades like woodworking, metalwork, sewing, and cooking so they have skills they need to get jobs when they graduate. As we soon discover on our home visits in the Pumwani slums, it’s important to give children an opportunity to make money and hopefully get out of their current living situation. After seeing the school, we make our way out of St. John’s with Peter, a few of our sponsored children, and some of the school staff. I am expecting to see some harsh living conditions for these children.

NAVIGATING THE MAZE

As soon as we crossed into the slums, my fears became a reality. The slums were worse than I had anticipated. The mud roads were filled with people in every direction. Children played in the streets, women washed clothes in large bins near trash-filled ditches, and men repaired broken motorbikes outside of small, rundown shacks. Some people pushed carts of scrap metal for recycling, and others scavenged through piles of garbage that littered the sidewalks. Larger homes had been broken into smaller sections and added onto over and over again. Materials such as tin and wood were used to create small, make-shift rooms where families lived together, sometimes multi-generationally. They were literally living on top of one another.

Between 70,000 and 100,000 people live in Pumwani, most in houses that are the size of an American bathroom. They have no running water, very little electricity and no means to cook or wash indoors. It is claustrophobic to walk around in the slum, even though we are outside, and it is very dangerous. Crime is rampant because young men who have no education and no work get involved with drugs and crime to make money.

It is amazing to watch the children make their way through the slum. They seem to know their way intuitively. Of course, they do it every day of their lives, but to me, it’s very confusing. The children duck under metal sheets and squeeze between buildings that are barely wide enough for them to fit.

a stitch in time saves a life

The slums are so packed and so hot that it feels as though the world is crushing down on me. There is no escape from the noise and the filth; it feels hopeless here, and there doesn’t seem to be a way out. The people here are closed in, isolated, and the children have nowhere to go. Even if they could get out, where they would go and what would they do?

Just as things appeared to be all too hopeless, we met Mwanaharusi. We were brought to the home of this former Children Incorporated-sponsored child who had graduated from St. John’s Center a number of years ago. Mwanaharusi’s sponsor helped her through school, and soon after graduating, she was able to save money to purchase a sewing machine. She has turned her talent into a business and makes a living fixing garments for other people living in the neighborhood.

The mud roads were filled with people in every direction. Children played in the streets, women washed clothes in large bins near trash-filled ditches.

She works out of her home, which is a dark, one-room shack. As we watch, Mwanaharusi sits at a small table, demonstrating how her machine works. It takes a long time to make garments because there is little room for her to spread out; the foot-powered sewing machine takes up most of the room she shares with her mother and grandmother. A couch and one bed fill the floor space. As Luis and I sit and watch her, a few neighbors come by, eager to have her repair their clothes. It is obvious that her work is in demand and she has picked a good business to start in this area.

A long, slow climb up

Before we left, Mwanaharusi brought over something she had sewn – a beautiful, brightly colored shirt. She told us that she had made it for her sponsor and asked for us to deliver to him back in the United States. I don’t know the going rate for a shirt in Pumwani, but considering the quality and care it took to make, Mwanaharusi’s gift speaks volumes of what her sponsor means to her — and that breaking the cycle of poverty doesn’t happen overnight.

Child sponsorship doesn’t guarantee that a child will overcome the crushing poverty we saw in Pumwani, but it does provide an education, which is their only shot at getting out of the slums.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN KENYA?

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | June 9, 2016En Español

It’s a long way from Kentucky to Ethiopia – 7,432 miles to be exact; twice as far as the Bolivia-to-Kentucky trip we just made.

One would think the differences in the three locales are profound, but other than the climates, they are strikingly similar.

Children play in the roads near dilapidated homes and other signs of obvious poverty. But they laugh and sing, clad in pants and t-shirts and sneakers, pretending to be sports stars as they play ball on makeshift fields by the roads.

From Kentucky to Kenya, Children Incorporated supports children all over the world.

At least that’s what I’ve been told – I won’t arrive in Ethiopia for a few more hours, but I’ve just finished a whirlwind tour of Bolivia and rural Kentucky, and my colleague, Luis Bourdet, assures me that Ethiopia will be the same.

Luis, who’s visited Children Incorporated’s sponsored children and their families in Africa every couple of years for the last decade, says the issues are similar as well – child poverty is an endemic due to fractured families and parents who can’t make ends meet.

Our first stop is Addis Ababa, and I have no doubt we’ll see the same things there that we saw in Jackson County, Kentucky and in Montero, Bolivia: a combination of devastating poverty, the simple happiness of children and the lifesaving efforts of volunteers.

We’ll likely see the same on our next stop in rural Shashamane and then in Kenya’s communities of Nairobi and Materi.

So far, the big difference between our last trip to Kentucky and our current trip to Africa is the special packages we bring. In Kentucky, it was bicycles. In Africa, it’s mosquito nets. The environmental needs between 8,000 miles are different, but children everywhere are much the same, and so our goal is too: to give children not only food and medicine, but also hope, determination, and especially education.

Children play in the roads near dilapidated homes and other signs of obvious poverty. But they laugh and sing, clad in pants and t-shirts and sneakers, pretending to be sports stars as they play ball on makeshift fields by the roads.

Ethiopia’s mass migration

One of the differences between Kentucky and Ethiopia is the reasons why families are poor. In Kentucky, it was a lack of jobs. But Ethiopia is a country on the rise – in Addis Ababa, buildings and roads are being built everywhere, so labor jobs are plentiful. The problem is housing; the government has been relocating (often forcibly) Ethiopians from rural land into the cities where the cost of housing can be 20 times what they’d been paying.

There are also no social services there. In Kentucky, families live in rundown trailers and often don’t have enough money for food or school supplies, but they do have access to school buses, health clinics and social workers.

In Ethiopia, organizations like Children Incorporated are the only ones who provide these services so we’re coming to visit some of the Children Incorporated affiliated projects that provide children and their families with education, medical aid and a future.

Our first stop will be at the Rainbow Center, where children of relocated families get support. We’re also going to visit some of the families and talk to them about their experiences and needs.

The rural poor

From there, we’ll head out to the smaller city of Shashamane, where the Kids Hope Ethiopia center supports after-school programs for children. Shashamane residents are worse off than their Addis Ababa countrymen because there isn’t enough clean water or food here and there’s almost no transportation. We’ll meet with some of the families there too before leaving for Nairobi in Kenya, about 1,500 miles away.

Kenya on $1.25 per day

Kenya is a developing nation but the poverty there is much deeper; half of all Kenyans live below the poverty level and about 17 percent live on less than $1.25 per day.

In Kenya, sponsorship often means the difference between children going to school or not.

Some of the poverty in Kenya is due to disease – malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and pneumonia take a huge toll so healthcare will be one of our major issues when we head toward Nairobi.

The capital city is home to one of the world’s largest slums but it’s also home to several Children Incorporated schools and community centers. The facilities provide medical aid, HIV/AIDS counseling and day-to-day necessities, in addition to education for children.

We’re planning to visit the schools and the homes of the children who attend them before heading to Materi, where Children Incorporated sponsors a boarding school for girls.

A common goal

Each stop on our itinerary will mean some differences, of course. The rural children of Shashamane, with no transportation and little food, face different issues than those in the overpopulated crime-filled slums of Nairobi — at least on the surface. At its core, their issue is all the same: they need food, clothes, shoes, medicine and an education, just like the children we saw in Kentucky and in Bolivia.

So the 11,600 miles between La Paz, Bolivia and Materi, Kenya, do little to change our goal: to give children with the basics so they have a chance to rise above poverty. But, it’s more than that, really. On the heels of our recent site visits in Bolivia and Kentucky, I can see that sponsorships provides something intangible, but visible in their young faces: love.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN AFRICA?

You can sponsor a child in Africa in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Africa that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | May 27, 2016En Español

“I don’t know who gave us these bikes, but tell her I love her!”

The boy’s words keep echoing in my mind as we make the eight-hour trek from Kentucky back to Richmond, Va. Over the course of the last several weeks, we’ve met with so many children I’ve nearly lost count, but their faces and words stand out in my memory.

Kentucky and Bolivia are worlds apart, but there are many similarities between the two.

View from La Paz, Bolivia

Eastern Kentucky is one of the poorest regions in the United States. Unemployment is high and children grow up in run-down trailers, far from main roads and more importantly, social services and public facilities like libraries and community centers.

It’s not unlike the mountain towns of Bolivia, which have a much larger population but a similar situation for impoverished children who live in dilapidated homes on the outskirts of town with no transportation and no access to public services.

There are other parallels, including the songs, hobbies and games children play. Separated by 4,000 miles, the children of Bolivia probably never realize that their counterparts in Kentucky are also playing soccer behind the school in the afternoon. Their cartoon-character t-shirts and tennis shoes, gifts from sponsors, are interchangeable — even their pets.

Cats and kittens

Three days ago, I met Allison in Jackson County, Kentucky. The 7-year-old lives down a logging road with her underemployed parents, her sisters and her cats. When her sponsor asked her what kind of gifts she’d like, her main request was for cat food.

Just like Efrain. The Bolivian fourth-grader lives in a one-bedroom home with his mother, two siblings and three kittens. Efrain politely answered our questions about his schoolwork, his home and his new donated shoes, but it was the kittens that he really wanted to talk about; he couldn’t wait to show us the spot where they sleep next to the bed he shares with his brother.

Kentucky and Bolivia are worlds apart, but there are many similarities between the two.

Constructing a better life

The construction projects aren’t that much different either. In Bolivia, Children Incorporated donated materials and volunteers helped renovate an entire school about 25 kilometers outside Montero. In Kentucky, we didn’t have to build the schools but we did build a ramp at the home of 11-year-old Dennis.

The fifth-grader and his two siblings live with their elderly great-grandparents, who are struggling to care for three children while their own health is failing. Gail, Dennis’ great-grandmother, couldn’t climb the front steps anymore so Children Incorporated donated building materials and the local high school vocational students all got together to build her a ramp.

Skipping a generation

That underprivileged children live with aging grandparents is another ubiquitous truth across nations. In Kentucky, it’s largely caused by the rampant drug use that has swept the region, leaving parents dead, incarcerated or incapable of raising children.

In Bolivia, parents often depart for other countries to find work, leaving children with their grandparents. Regardless of the reasons, this missing generation is especially hard on families as the already-impoverished elderly struggle to care for growing, hungry children.

And in both countries, Children Incorporated sponsors send in food, clothes, shoes and school supplies — and cat food.

Next stop: Kenya

As we near Richmond, it’s time to turn our attention to the next trip – it’s 8,000 miles to Kenya and we’ve got several days before we begin. I have no doubt that once we arrive, we’ll find that just like in Bolivia and Kentucky, the children there need clothes and food but love sports and cats.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD?

You can sponsor a child with Children Incorporated in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | March 21, 2016En Español

Imagine you are a parent and your little boy has had a fever off and on for days now; he is always tired, and his body aches. You think he has malaria. All he needs is medicine, but you are poor and can’t even afford to take him to the doctor — much less get him the medicine he needs to get better. But if he doesn’t get help soon, he could end up having breathing problems for the rest of his life. Or worse, he could die. You are desperate and feel helpless.

Trained professionals run the Dandora Clinic in Kenya.

This is a reality for too many families in and around Kenya’s capital and largest city, Nairobi – but the community clinic at the Dandora Community Center is making a difference. With your help, they can reach even more families, preventing unnecessary health problems, and even death.

Offering services for everyone

Right now, the center looks after the well-being of over 400 kids and counting. Most of its patients have malaria, intestinal parasites, or upper-respiratory infections — or they are pregnant women looking for prenatal care.

The Dandora Community Center wants to offer more health care services, and it has space and the staff with the know-how to do so — but the clinic isn’t in good enough shape. They would like to add family planning, long-term treatment of illnesses, lab services, minor surgeries, and early childhood care to the list of services.

With your help, they can reach even more families, preventing unnecessary health problems, and even death.

In need of more supplies

But they need an estimated $8,000 to make repairs and improvements before these additional services can be offered and they can reach an even wider area. The clinic must buy an autoclave, kits for dressing wounds, a microscope, a machine for testing blood, and a scale for weighing babies. There is plenty of space for the clinic to expand, but the building is in need of repair; the inside needs to be painted, walls need to be redone, and the floor needs tiles.

The location of the Dandora Community Center is also ideal for reaching a large number of people in Nairobi, as it is surrounded by slums, which house more people than less poor areas do.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN KENYA?

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | March 3, 2016En Español

Children Incorporated works in collaboration with the Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf (FAID) in Riad El Solh Beirut, Lebanon.

Among the students who attend this school are many Syrian child refugees who have been hearing-impaired since birth. Their families must face the enormous challenge of adequately accommodating the special needs of a deaf child while fleeing their home country in search of safety.

The need for more sponsors

These refugee households are particularly lacking, since without any support from the Lebanese government because of their immigration status, it is incredibly difficult for them to provide their children with the equipment, care, and nutrition they need to get an education. More child refugees continue to enroll in the Children Incorporated program
at the school, so your support is very desperately needed.

Through our association with the FAID and the generosity of our sponsors and donors, many children are already receiving medical and psychological care, food, speech therapy lessons and clothing. The need is still great for so many others, who, if sponsored, would experience a dramatic positive change in their lives. Without support, the odds against children at FAID will continue to be stunting, and they will miss a chance to overcome insurmountable obstacles.

the high cost of helping children

Powerful hearing aids alone cost between $400 and $600 each, and they are essential for a deaf child to have – especially in school. Hearing today will give these kids the promise of a brighter, more vibrant tomorrow – a tomorrow in which they have the potential to succeed, even as refugees.

Additionally, the school needs a generator, equipment for the science lab for making ear molds, materials for the speech and language departments, and school supplies. The estimated cost of fulfilling all of these needs exceeds $15,000.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN LEBANON?

You can sponsor a child in Lebanon in one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at
1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Lebanon that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD