New Night Shelter For Luanda Streetchildren’s Project

The Luanda Streetchildren’s Project was one of the first projects Kofup adopted back in 2003, and it has been a real joy to see it going from strength to strength each year. The project feeds, clothes and educates children who would otherwise be living in rags in the dirt on the side of the road, with no caring adult to look after them and in danger of developing a glue-sniffing habit.

Last year Kofup trustees were delighted to be at the official opening of the new night shelter, which means that the children can now be safely housed at night whilst their social problems are being sorted out. Kofup funded a significant part of the cost of the shelter.

This year the trustees met 17 clean, healthy, well-fed children whose lives are being transformed from hopelessness to the chance of a better future. They are lively, cheeky and love to entertain visitors with singing, dancing and drama. 

Here is an extract from a poem which the children compiled together called ‘Street Life’:

Our life in the streets was a life of no hope. Life of picking rotten food from the dustbins.
Life of no clothes. Life of fighting all the time. Life of even burning each other.
Life of slaps and kicks. Life of no care for each other. Life of mistreatment.
Life of misused and manipulated. Life of no parent or guardian to care.
We cried for our parents, nobody came.
Yes that is the life we led in the streets.
We did work nobody else would dare do.
We emptied the overflowing latrines and unblocked sewages without protection.
We lived a life of begging. Whoever had mercy would give a shilling.
Those with bad hearts rewarded with slaps and blows. We lived a life of survival of the fittest.
And that is the life our brothers are still living in the streets today.
Some days we could sleep hungry if the dustbins were cleared.
That is the time we sniffed glue to forget our hunger. Though it did us no better...
We are also human beings, fellow citizens and God loves us all. We need you and you need us too. We would not have been here if not for you. We are who we are today because of you.
We ask for your prayers that the God who brought you here may continue to protect you always.
May he continue to lead us to be good children. We have a long way to go.
We have nothing special to offer in return.
Only we say from the bottom of our heart:
THANK YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE GIVEN US HOPE IN LIFE.

Severe Drought In Kenya

The rains have been particularly poor this year in Kenya and the country is now experiencing a severe drought, with several million people already dependent on food aid.

Instead of being able to harvest their own maize, one of the staples of the Kenyan diet, many people are now reduced to buying maize flour. Because of the global economic downturn, a 2kg bag of flour has doubled in price from around 55ksh a year ago to around 110 ksh today. For the very poor who struggle to earn even a few shillings a day, this is a catastrophe and can only lead to even greater hunger. It also has implications for KOFUP funding because what we give now buys less than it did before.

Any donation you can spare, however small you might think it is, will go towards helping alleviate some of the hardship that people are experiencing at this time.

Pandipieri Healthcare Programme

Apollo Odhiambo is a young man with two small children aged 4 and 7yrs. They live in the Nyalenda slum on the edge of Kisumu, Western Kenya in a tiny mud-and-wattle house surrounded by other tiny houses and with streams of filthy water running outside the door and rubbish strewn all around. There is no clean running water or electricity.

Apollo had a job as a motorbike taxi until he was caught up in the post-election violence at the beginning of the year. Apollo was shot through the head, the bullet entering through the back of his brain and exiting through the frontal lobe. He lived to tell the tale but is left paralyzed down one side, epileptic and with speech problems. His wife is doing her best to generate income through her small business, but they can no longer pay the nursery school fees for the younger child nor the primary school expenses for the older one. Apollo goes to the provincial hospital for physiotherapy twice a week – he has to pay for this along with the transport to get him there. He has not received a shilling in compensation.

Apollo and his family will benefit from KOFUP funding to the Pandipieri Healthcare Programme which will make sure that his children go to school and get the education that will give them hope for a better future.

Start-Up Grant For Yala Widows’ Co-Operative

If you help widows to greater independence you are helping vulnerable children to a brighter future. In the small community of Yala in western Kenya, a widows’ co-operative has been set up, teaching skills that generate income and mean increased self-sufficiency for these women struggling to feed, clothe and educate their children.

KOFUP was pleased to give a grant of £500 to the co-operative which will be used to buy start-up items like seeds to grow crops, wool to crochet cardigans and materials to make mats. The results of their endeavours will then be sold at market (on a stall funded by KOFUP) with part of the profits being ploughed back into the co-operative and the rest going to give these women and their families the chance of a better life.

KOFUP Visits The Luanda Street Kids Project

During our trip this summer, the trustees visited one of the poorest homes we have seen when on a visit to the Luanda Street Kids Project, a project KOFUP has funded since 2003. Odinga 12yrs, Odongo 6yrs and 3-year old Rebecca live with their parents in a tiny mud-and-wattle structure. Because of the unsealed dirt floor they all suffer with jiggers, tiny parasites that burrow under the flesh and suck the blood. The father of the family is very old and cannot work. The mother has mental health problems. They exist on just a small amount of millet each day which they harvest from their shamba (vegetable plot).

Odinga came to the attention of the Luanda project in March this year when he arrived with sore, bleeding, jigger-infested feet, a very anxious, unsmiling child. An accident when he was younger left him with a weakness down the right side and poor communication skills. The sisters at the Luanda project painstakingly picked out the jiggers and encouraged him to come regularly to the project. They also gave him flip-flops to help keep further jiggers at bay. After several months of attending the project, Odinga is noticeably more relaxed and smiling. He gets a hot meal every day and lessons at the informal school. 

His little brother Odongo has jiggers in his hands and feet and on the day we met him they looked swollen and sore. He came to the Luanda project once but refused to come again maybe because it hurt to walk there. Odongo is mute. He is a bright child who uses signs to communicate and he needs to be at school.

The project are looking at ways to help this family including getting proper needs assessments for the boys.        

KOFUP is proud to support the excellent Luanda Project which continues to help children break their glue-sniffing habits, and has seen growing numbers of children re-united with their families, or placed with foster families, and integrated into the state school system.

Pandipieri Healthcare Programme

A country needs educated people if it is to progress economically and socially. In a country where fees have to be paid for nursery, secondary and further education, the poor, and especially children without parents, have no hope of completing (sometimes even starting) their schooling

More and more, KOFUP finds its funds being used to pay for children’s and young people’s education. 

KOFUP, through the Pandipieri Healthcare Programme, is funding many young people through secondary or further education, including:

• Florence, who is in form 3 of secondaryschool and wants to be a doctor
• Denis, who is about to finish form 4 (last year of secondary)  and wants to be an engineer
• Victor,  who is studying law in Nairobi
• Fred who has just finished his training to become a clinical medical officer