By Jacinta van Luijk | Coordinator and Education Officer
New Lives and Hopeful Developments
Many of our Steps Clients are well on the way to sobriety or now sober. However as recovering addicted people they will need life-long attention. After attending minimal two years of intensive community-based treatment, from October 2024 onwards our 'Completion Group' will now move forward into its less intensive 'Maintenance Stage'.
Our 2023-24 two new treatment Groups ('St. Kizito' and 'Umoja Women') will move into their second-year Intensive Treatment Stage.
In December 2024 a 40-member strong new Steps Group was started in the Premium-Lukhuna area - in the shanty suburbs of Kitale town.
The positive changes in our Clients are heart-warming: Besides sobriety, also their physical health has improved, their homes and appearance have become cleaner and more organised. Instead of fighting each other several have become very good friends and can afford a smile.
Witnessing their positive changes and resilience is very encouraging.
However it is clear that the lives of many were beyond 'rock-bottom'.
Relationships, including those with their own, close families often had totally collapsed, they had become outcasts, stigmatised or lived in violent partnerships, carried deep feelings of resentment or guilt and had suffered enormous losses. It takes time to overcome these challenges. Sometimes the use of money has become a problem too, due to the pull of alcohol, drugs and other types of addiction. Many of their children know only a life of violence and drunkenness and beg on the streets to put some food in their stomachs.
Often their poverty is enormous. Addressing their material needs often feels overwhelming, and requires the support of all stakeholders in society.
Loss and Death
With our sincere efforts and the Clients' renewed willingness to live, it is truly sad to experience that sometimes their (young) bodies had already been damaged beyond treatment by the alcohol, drugs and violent lifestyles. Thus in the past term we lost four of our Clients to death. We hope that it has been a consolation to them to have left life under the caring hands of friends, and with more peaceful hearts and relationships.
Some others travelled to their far-away homes - we hope that their postive journey towards recovery will continue from there.
Activities
During the past period recovery sessions, refresher workshops, family days and home-visits continued as planned. There also were several psycho-education sessions in the community and schools. In these groups between 20-50 participants received education on alcohol- and substance abuse in series of three half day sessions.
It was so encouraging to find that even some known members of local gangs were willing to attend and share their feelings and lives.
We are grateful for the able and most helpful Counselling Supervision Sessions held for our professional counsellors by Dr. C. Cheruiyot during this period.
In addition all Counsellors continued or started their additional online studies in order to continue learning and fully comply with their registration by the Counselors andPsychologists Board.
In the months of October - December 2024 a small external evaluation was held of our Steps work by Dr. Jacqueline A. Anundo, PhD, Msc. Clinical Psychologist, ICAP II, CPM.
This recognised the recovery coaches and staffs to be passionate in their roles, the valuable involvement of local communities, the good documentation of data and data analysis, and the success stories despite KAP's lean staff.
Recommendations were given towards further improvement of data protection, additional data collection tools ('ASSIST' in addition to 'AUDIT' and 'CAGE') and encouragement towards further learning, amongst others. KAP identified a huge, as yet mainly unaddressed need for child protection for children living with the very many addicted parents and brewers.
YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ABOVE HAS BEEN VITAL, FOR WHICH OUR MOST SINCERE THANKS!
Use of Funds
During this project period - from the 1st September through the 23rd December 2024 KAP is grateful to have received Kenya Shillings (KES) 20,130!
These funds have been used for the implementation of a series of psycho-education sessions in Marambach, and, in combination with those from other donors to make contributions to our Staffs' salaries as well as the implementation of our external evaluation.
Our attached Financial Report refers
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