Finished! : Stone Security Wall
The first stage of building has been completed. It took three and a half weeks to finish and was meet head on with an intense rainy season. But it was completed and the workers even celebrated with a goat on the spit! The next project will be the toilets and wash area. This is our next fund rasing push. We have a balance of materials, such as stones, ballast and sand. However we need to raise US$2000 for completion. The wall was made possible because of many individual people giving what they had, whether it was $10 or $1000 – and that is the reality. We are not sponsored by a major corperation or organization, (yet!). But by individual people deciding to get stuck in and giving.
We would like to say a huge thank you to volunteers who fund rasied, and donated to make this a reality. You know who you are and we appreciate your efforts tremendously.
thank you.
Stone Security Wall Takes Shape
By this Saturday, we should be complete with the first project on site: A Stone Security Wall. But we aren’t stopping there! We would like to continue. The next project will be the toilets. Details on this will come soon. But for now you can see the progress of the wall directly on Facebook. Ideally, we would keep building. But we need to raise more money to do so. So below are some ideas on how you can help.
Ways to Get Involved:
1 COMMUNICATE. Emails, Facebook, Twitter, press, shares, fund raising, advocacy, presentations: - tell the KCC story to everyone you know. Use both your online and offline community. Get out in the community you live, and help spread the word.
2 WEAR. Buy & promote KCC T-shirts, hacky sacks, ECO Bags & jewelry online by clicking HERE
3 JOIN. KCC Safari CLUB: From $5 to $100+ you can donate monthly and join us in our journy. More info on the Get Involved page
4 DONATE. Easy and secure. Online donations can be sent through PayPal on the Donate page above. Every donation received will be sent a receipt with an option of a monthly e-newsletter, to keep you informed on how your donation has made a difference.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far.
You have made this whole project a reality.
KCC Builds
This Easter weekend people all around the world ate chocolates and hot cross buns, went to church services and spent time good friends and family. This Easter, we did some of these things, but we also began the foundations for the stone security wall on the new land! We have started the journey towards our new school. The past three days have been uploaded on to Facebook, so be sure to flick through the photos here.
Happy Easter!
Germination
We started a school garden early this year, with our volunteers and the permanent school volunteers. The garden is right by the kitchen and will be providing most of our vegetable needs in time. Currently we buy from local farmers and receive a small donation form a vegetable store (Back to Eden) in Naivasha town. This photo was taken on Friday 23rd and are the green bean seedlings we sowed 7 days ago. We also have cabbages, kale and carrots growing in the garden.
The garden is doing a number of different things:
First: its enabling the school to become more self reliant.
Second: Its teaching the kids about where food comes from and how its all connected
Third: Its a new part of placement for volunteers who help us at the school with planting, watering, weeding, harvesting – all those fun things!
We have also started a compost and have almost completed a separate water access point for the garden. Watch this space for more updates on our ventures with the soil!
Rebuild & Start Again
Its been over a month since the devastating fire claimed over 3000 people’s homes in KCC slums. The response from the local community has been mixed, but predominately people have believed that they should stay, and start again. Some of the families have lived in the area for 40 years, some just a few months, but however long someone has lived here people want to stay.
People are now rebuilding are starting again; businesses and homes. They will slowly rebuild on this same land and within time, come to a place of normality again.
Many small businesses and livelihoods were lost in the fire. But through a partnership with a UK registered charity, Mama Biashara, a few small portable one person businesses are getting back on their feet again.
Fires are a haunting reality in slums all over Kenya and developing countries worldwide. Its a major challenge, but maybe, through education of young people, these tragedies can become less frequent in the future.
Kitendo Childrens Charity has lost only a few children with people moving further out, but since the fire the team has worked very hard to promote education and get children to school and the results are that children have formed their routine back to school.
Medical Camp Results
On Friday and Saturday we ran a 2 day medical camp for the whole community from the KCC ECD School. Using classrooms and 3 tents we provided services in: minor treatments, growth and monitoring, immunizations, family planing, VCT (HIV), public forums and pharmaceutical. We also provided hundreds of cups of cooked uji(porrigae) and clothes donations for patients. The camp was very successful with many people amazed and thank full that the camp had no charge, and that it was organized for 2 days with free pharmaceutical distribution. Every person was provided a free patient record book and the camp was open to everyone: children, women, men, youth, elderly. We made three separate trips for medicines and had 50 volunteers from Ministry of Health, Kenya Red Cross, International Volunteers HQ, MYAA and KCC.
The total number of patients that came through were:
Friday: 344
Saturday: 325
Total: 669
The common minor conditions that we came across were:
- (Under 5 years old) Diarrhoeal diseases, Upper respiratory tract Infection, Intestinal Infestion, Pneumonia,
- (Over 5 years old) Upper respiratory tract Infection, Malaria, Skin Infections, urinary tract infections, Rheumatism & Diseases of the joints
- VCT (HIV counselling and testing) were 122 total.
- 49 clients received family planning services.
For photos please click onto our Facebook page, like us, and keep up todate with the progress. We will be making some annosements in the coming days so make sure to watch out for this.
The Next Two Days
We are getting ready for a 2 day medical camp that will start tomorrow. The camp will be run from KCC school from 10am to 4pm each day. The services will be free and there will be a pharmacy for medications. We will be focusing on minor treatments, growth & monitoring, immunizations, family planning, VCT (HIV testing and counselling) and public education. The camp will have a volunteer group mix of local Minisrty of Health professionals, Kenya Red Cross, community health care workers, International Volunteers, Fadhili Community and KCC staff and volunteers. This will be the third camp we have sponsored and organized in the the comunity, but with this camp we are hoping to reach as many people as possible in light of this weeks events. We will be serving food at the camp and we hope that the event will be a moral boost for the community. People are tired, confused, hungry and so with this outreach we hope to give people what they need at their time of need.
Today we repeated our food program as well as feeding children a supper meal to carry them over to tomorrow. We have been reaching out to as many children as possible regardless of wherther they are in our records or not. The main aim of this has simply been to help children, and give them what they need to keep them going, while their families resettle themselves. This is in no way a hand out, but a path to empower people who have been stripped of the bare necessities. There is a timeline and this isnt forever, but if a child is hungry and weak, this is where we have come in by feeding them, encourage them and with this action, smiles and appreciation radiates, even without words said.
This is why we stared KCC two years ago, to empower people.
Part of the support we have received this week is going directly into running this event. We have advertised the event with posters and banners on a farmers truck that has been driving around the area all day today, along with MYAA and word of mouth. We hope many people come and receive what they need to cope with the fire aftermath. There are a lot of things we can not do, but this kind of outreach is right within our strengths so this is what we have decided to do.
