Orphan Support in Kenya:

 

Camp Kenya orphan outreach programme.

 

 

 

 

Overview

 

Our orphan outreach programme is designed to help orphans and other vulnerable children by providing them with a stable and safe environment in which to grow and learn. Our volunteers get the unique opportunity to play a vital role in the development of underprivileged children by providing essential emotional and social support.

 

The programme encourages the existing traditional community home life and creates a sense of responsibility amongst the children, their parents and the volunteers. It is also an opportunity for volunteers to experience community life and gain deeper understanding of very often, hard life challenges in a typical rural African set up. Volunteers are expected to develop practical initiatives that improve the children’s lives in a simple but effective and caring way.

 

 

 

Chanukeni Child Care Centre

 

Since 2008, Camp Kenya has been providing support to Chanukeni Children’s Care Centre; a project implemented by the Chanukeni Women’s Group. This is a registered self-help association whose main objective is to provide support to orphans and other needy children. The group currently supports 35 children who are either orphans or socially and economically deprived. The children are taken care of in a day care centre, which also operates as a nursery school. Currently pupils do receive an education here, but the long-term objective of the group is to build a more suitable learning centre and to provide uniforms and teaching material as well as providing sports training.

The existing centre has been built on piece of land that was donated by a group member who has also taken on the role of teaching the children. The women’s group has contributed limited materials to construct the centre, which was initially a very basic mud walled makuti thatched structure. The floors were not cemented which led to an infestation of jigger worms in over 90% of the children who attend the day centre. Not only did this infection prove painful for the children but was also leading to a loss of study time and is detrimental to their education.

 

The center was also not equipped with sanitary facilities. Children therefore had no choice but to relieve themselves in the surrounding bush. A combination of diseases and sickness related to poor hygiene such as diarrhoea, cholera and dysentery are common in such settings.

 

With the support of our volunteers, we have made a massive impact in providing a strong foundation of this much needed centre through:

· Completion of two new classrooms

· The toilet block is complete

· The well has a concrete cover and lock only accessible to the school children.

· Vegetable garden in order to secure necessary food for the orphans.

· Monthly basic food necessities rations.

 

Moreover, through the kindness of many donors, most of whom have been our clients, others just visitors to the centre, the children have received plenty of books, pens, pencils, clothes, shoes and toys. The children also now have uniforms. Camp Kenya’s collaboration with the group has improved services at the centre in order to provide real quality support to the children.

As we have met our targets, and aim to provide sustainable income-generation through micro-enterprise for the management of the centre, Camp Kenya will moving away slowly from the centre as we identify other similar institutions that require vital support. It is our hope that the centre will now be in a much more suitable position to continue providing for the needy children within the area.

 

 

 

It has opened my eyes to a different world and I hope this knowledge will stay with me in whatever I do.

Georgia Rodgers