KOFUP currently supports thirteen projects in Kenya. We would like to thank everyone who contributes. Without doubt you have helped, and are helping, to change lives and give hope.
Ujuang'a
Ujuang'a is in Asembo, a subsistence farming community close to the northern shore of the Winam Gulf in Lake Victoria. In 2001 KOFUP began a partnership with the bishop of a local church to support their efforts on behalf of orphaned children. The area is home to hundreds of orphans.
IMPACT: The Ujuang’a Orphans’ Programme was KOFUP’s first project, providing funds for school and college fees, nutrition support, health-care and training in child-care and micro-finance. After several years of capacity-building through our collaboration with the Omega Foundation, a Kenya-based NGO, the Ujuang’a community was enabled to access support from alternative sources. This freed up KOFUP funds for other initiatives. Our involvement with Ujuang’a has had a significant impact on very many young lives.
Ujuang’a orphan family
THE KASIRAWA CHILD INTEGRATED PROJECT
This project is a home-based community group currently providing support for 74 children.
Kasirawa is a village in a very dry part of Western Kenya where soil fertility is very poor and people rely heavily on fishing from Lake Victoria.
Poverty and disease leave the caregivers, mostly young widows, struggling to provide for their children.
The project has links to the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Children’s Department, County Administration and local church leaders, so making this a strong community initiative.
KOFUP’s Role
KOFUP funds pay for school fees and uniform for children who would otherwise be unable to access education.
We have paid for the training of caregivers in “table banking” (small-scale community banking) and small business initiatives. Community health workers and other community volunteers have also benefitted from training.
We have also sent contingency funds to relieve hardships caused by flooding and the COVID pandemic.
Since KOFUP became involved, the community have developed activities and procedures to become more self-reliant.
Kasirawa children enjoy the shade of the trees.
NEEDS: Life is extremely hard for the families and many of the children are missing out on education so tying them into a life of continued grinding poverty. With further KOFUP funding the community can grow stronger and educate more and more of their children, giving hope for a brighter future for the next generation.
“G9” project
in KAHAWA WEST
Kahawa West is a poor township about 20 Km north-east of the Kenya capital, Nairobi. It is named after the coffee plantations that used to cover the slopes. (“Kahawa” is the Swahili word for “coffee”).
Nowadays Kahawa West is a sprawling estate crowded with houses of varying quality and with large slum areas. Githurai 45 is one of those slum areas in which members of the Community of Pope John XXIII, an Italian lay missionary society (http://en.apg23.org), live and work.
KOFUP’s Role
KOFUP supports some of the Community’s work with orphans and street children. Our funds have helped to develop facilities in their street-kids’ centre as well as paying fees for school and vocational training.
The Community’s outreach workers, supported by KOFUP’s resources, interact with street dwellers within Githurai 45, which has been described as one of the toughest slums, notorious for crime and other social issues. One outcome has been the recent launch of a plastics recycling scheme, improving the local environment and providing a sustainable income-generating activity for a number of young people.
Kahawa Project volunteers and KOFUP visitors with streetkids
NEEDS: KOFUP’s assistance has brought about a great improvement in the life-chances of some young people but the levels of deprivation in the slum are so profound that our current contribution only scratches the surface.
PRECIOUS TEARS initiative
PTI is a Community-Based Organization (CBO) committed to serving mainly girls and young women. It focuses on improving livelihoods, mental and physical health, education and life skills.
They aim to create an enabling environment for education, social interaction and economic empowerment for girls and young women.
Dropping out of school increases girls’ vulnerability to early marriage, gender-based violence, maternal death, drug abuse and depression, among other things.
To avoid early marriages which are often arranged by extended families against their will, orphaned or impoverished teenage girls need job opportunities for financial independence or funds to continue their education.
PTI addresses the challenges they face, such as teenage pregnancy, which force many to abandon their ambitions in life.
KOFUP’s Role
We have collaborated with PTI since 2015.
Our support funds mentorship camps for both girls and boys, and includes primary, secondary and further education sponsorship.
With KOFUP’s backing, PTI also provides training in child development and entrepreneurship for teen mothers.
ATEMO COMMMUNITY EDUCATION INITIATIVE (ACEI)
§ ACEI grew out of our 15-year collaboration with Atemo Mixed Secondary School. Joseph Akewo, the retired Principal, set up ACEI as a Community-Based Organisation (CBO) in 2019 to enable impoverished children to attend one of the 5 secondary schools within the Ringa community Homabay County.
KOFUP’s Role
KOFUP pays fees each year for several hundred young people to access education in the 5 secondary schools:
In 2022
188 in Atemo
49 in Otel
113 in Orinde
85 in God Agak
160 in Apondo
Assembly at Atemo Mixed Secondary School
In addition, KOFUP’s “Mama Always” programme provides sanitary pads for the girls of Orinde and Atemo who might otherwise miss a week of their education each month. This type of support dramatically improves girls' school attendance and performance.
RAROKI INTEGRATED CHILD & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
RICCDEP is a community initiative in a deeply impoverished rural area by the shores of Lake Victoria. Their aim is “to use local resources to build the capacity of the local community to tackle their own challenges and those of their neighbourhood”.
Nancy, Lorrine, Kennedy, Brian and Lavine are Secondary School students supported by KOFUP
The population of about 300,000 depend on subsistence farming despite irregular rainfall and poor soil – the area got its name, “Raroki”, from the “rocky” nature of the soil and landscape.
Some people, especially widows, engage in quarrying stone for use in buildings. This is done by hand and is heavy, dangerous work, offering small rewards for back-breaking labour.
KOFUP trustees first visited RAROKI in 2005 and were impressed by RICCDEP’s efforts to mobilise the community to tackle their own problems.
A recent proposal from RICCDEP is entitled “Scaling Up Impact To Leave No Orphaned Child Behind” (July 2022).
KOFUP’s Role
Since 2005, with KOFUPs collaboration, RICCDEP have seen hundreds of orphaned & vulnerable children and young people through every level of education.
PANDIPIERI
Kisumu, on the shores of Lake Victoria, is the third largest city in Kenya.
The many slums which surround it are home to thousands of people struggling to earn a living and provide for their families in the most basic living conditions.
HIV/AIDs remain major health problems along with TB and malaria.
In the heart of the Nyalenda slum, the Pandipieri Centre provides informal schooling for street-kids, a streetchild rehabilitation centre, healthcare, nutrition support, and vocational training, including a thriving art school.
KOFUP’s Role
Since the early 2000s KOFUP has been funding a programme to enable orphans and desperately poor children and young people to access education through paying fees, providing food, clothing and other basic needs.
St Luke’s Mini-Nursery
In Manyatta, another slum in Kisumu, St. Lukes Mini-Nursery is a community initiative founded by the late Mama Felgon Jacks. St Luke’s provides free pre-primary education and a feeding programme for about 70 of the smallest children of the slum.
KOFUP’s Role
We fund the feeding programme.
We provide stipends for the teachers.
We have also funded improvements to the school environment, including access to clean water.
St Christina’s Elite Nursery/Primary School
Kisii town is over 2 hour’s drive from Kisumu, in the fertile Kisii Highlands. St Christina’s School in Suneka, 5 miles west of Kisii, offers high quality education to children from the surrounding area. It is a private, fee-paying school but is committed, with KOFUP’s support, to providing guaranteed places for orphans or vulnerable or destitute children.