Help Build a Community Centre at St Martins School

Greetings from St martins School and the Kibagare Community,

Thanks to your continued support, we are grateful for the far we have come. We have continued to work with the guardians, especially the women in the slum, to develop ways to help sustain themselves. 

From our observation, it is clear that most of the families are regressing due to the many challenges they are faced with on a day-to-day basis.

Current Situation:  Kenya is facing the worst drought due to the effects of Climate change. This has led to high inflation due to the high food prices and lack of employment opportunities. This has a far-reaching impact on the Kibagare community where we work with the children and women being the most affected.

As a school, our school feeding program has been affected due to reduced funding thanks to competing causes and this has made it very difficult for us to feed the children we foresee an even greater problem with schools set to close from the 23rd of November.

Community Groups:  We have continued to sensitize the community on the importance of working in groups to help them change their fortunes and increase their incomes to help support their families. We have 17 women groups participating in Merry go round and voluntary savings and loanings. Through Door to door mobilization, most members of the community are keen on forming their groups from January of 2023.

Small-Scale Business:  To date, we have 50 women doing small-scale business to support their families. Due to inflation and the high operating costs, 40% of the businesses are not doing very well and some have since closed down. 30% are trying their best though there is low demand and more so some are selling the same products thus forced to share their small profits.

Household Visits: We have been able to conduct household visits to assess the status of the homes the community members are living in. Most of the families are not doing very well and highly probable they may become worse in the next few weeks with schools closed. Most of the children are fed in the school from Monday to Friday and also during the weekends. with Schools closed the burden of feeding the children will be on the parents and guardians most of who have limited or no means to support their families. This will have a significant impact on the children and even their parents and we are thinking of ways to change this though we are faced with the challenge of limited funding.

Even with all the challenges, we are facing we are optimistic that through the support we receive and continue to receive we will be able to do the much we can for the community here and help them navigate through some of the challenges they will encounter in the next few weeks.

Thank you all for your support and we will ensure to send updates on the much that we will achieve over time.

Best regards,

Alfred Aswan.

Links:

• School Website