Health and Social Care for 2500 kids in Nairobi

A new year has begun, and the world is still battling COVID and the consequences of this horrible pandemic.

In Kenya, the numbers are not as appalling as somewhere else, but the long months of lockdown, curfew, and preventive measures have caused great harm to those who were already living in difficult conditions, such as the million people living inside the slums.

The economy of the slums has been shattered since the first closures in March 2020, and people started suffering the consequences of hunger and unemployment from the very beginning of the pandemic. Families founded themselves with kids at home, because of schools being closed, and adults locked inside their tiny metal shack without a chance to find a job for the day and bring food home at night.

Being present every day in Korogocho and Dandora gave us the chance to be present for these families, helping them with food, medicines, and psychosocial support to give them a hand to get through the tough times. Finally, after months of waiting and receiving different updates, on January 4th we've been able to open our schools for the new year!

Finally, our children have been able to go back to school, to receive a guaranteed meal every day, to receive again the protection that school, in the slum, can guarantee.
What have we done in recent months with your help to ensure that our children can return to school safely?

1. Built hand-washing points at the entrance to the facilities: taps with running water and soap for pupils, teachers, and parents of students.

2. Purchased sanitizing gel and masks to distribute in each classroom.

3. Purchased digital thermometers to measure the temperature of all students as they enter and leave class.

All students were incredibly excited to go back to class, and we are so happy they can readjust to their daily routine and start building their future with hard work.

THANKS TO ALL OUR AMAZING DONORS who trusted us and gave their contribution to let us achieve our most important goal. Now there's a lot of work to be done to help rebuild the economy of our kids' families, and we'll do our best to make this 2021 a year of joy and satisfaction for them.

After six months since the arrival of the COVID pandemic in Kenya, the situation is still incredibly difficult for the families living inside the slums of Korogocho and Dandora. The lockdown measures have put a strain on the parents and adults who couldn't go out to look for a daily job, losing the chance of having a small amount of money to buy dinner with at the end of the working hours; people were scared of the virus and of dying of hunger. Children, on the other hand, have lost the school year, and so much more. Schools are the only places inside the slums where children are safe, cared for, far away from the risks of violence, abuse, malnutrition and work. It doesn't come as a surprise that, since the school closure, children have been more involved in helping the parents with their daily search for a job, they have been a target of violence, unwanted pregnancies and there's a high risk that many of them won't be coming back to school in January 2021.

We've been focused on bringing assistance to the families living inside the slums and thanks to the generous contribution of our donors we've been able to achieve great results!

Since March we've assisted 694 families in need of help, and among these there were 54 special cases of families who were at risk of not surviving because of the lack of food and clean water.
We've been able to reach 3.150 children between the age of 3 and 19, some of whom had escaped the slums and went to the rural areas at their relatives' houses, facing sometimes harder consequences because of the lack of services in the remote regions.
We've completed 445 home visits in Korogocho and Dandora to make sure each and every family received its food package, medicines, and that the social workers could monitor the psychological consequences of the lockdown. Thanks to this, we've tracked and took action on 6 confirmed cases of abuse on young girls, separating them from the perpetrators and putting them into a safe environment.

In total, we've brought support to 4.500 people!

Thanks to the generosity of our donors we will continue with the activities of food distribution and home visits to make sure that every child and his family receive all the necessary for the following months.