Sustainable and key support for Kibagare Community

Greetings form St Martins School and the Kibagare community.

We are grateful for the far we have have come thanks to your continued support.It is through this support that we have been able to make good progress since our last update.

We have continued to support the community to enable them to make ends meets. We have observed that the community is still hugely affected with high employment rates. 75% of the youth, women and men are not employed due to limited opportunities and high inflation, forcing many families into poverty. Most of the people living in the slum are frrustrated and forced to engage in negative social behaviours like prostitution, drug abuse, crime and child labour. Children are the most affected because of the challenges faced by their parents and guardians.

Housing is still a huge problem here and it is made worse by the recent flooding tha has affected the better part of Nairobi and the country in general. The people living in the slum have been badly affected with their houses having leaking roofs and forced to look for makeshift places to sleep because their houses made of mud floors are wet.

The main business activities are small scale - seliing vegetables, used clothes and casual work. This is not enough to support the ever growing needs of their families and in some instances many are forced to forego some meals to survive.

• Even with the many challenges, we have been able to conduct household visits and also sensitize the same households on eceonomic sustainability by encouraging them to jopin voluntary savings and loanings groups. 47 participated in this exerecise.
• We have also been able to have the 100 mothers trained on sales and marketing, branding, business planning, finance and record keeping thanks to our partnership with a local NGO - Hand in Hand.
• Due to the flooding that has affected businesses and houses in this community of Kibagare and the destabilization it has come with, through the social development office, a disaster management training and entrepreneurship was conducted in the community with focus on the changing business enviroment and how best to mitigate the challenges of small businesses.
• 92 households were assessed with 66.30% being severly vulnerable, 27.20% are modaerately vulnerable and 6.52% are sustainable.
• 47 members of the community were sensitized onthe importance of education. Schools reopened for the second term in the month of May and the parents were encouraged to support good performace for the students in school, provide a good and conducive learning enviroment for the children while at home. Parents of children who are slow learners were encouraged to foster good teache, students,and parents relationship to improve on learning outcomes.
• 294 Community memebers were sensitized on stigma and discrimination. there is still a. uge proble with stigam within the community here. this prevents most peopl from sharing thsir statuses to prveent the spread of HIV, AIDs and other opprtuinistic infections that affect this comnnunity here.

We have made good progress and we hope to continue doing more for this community here. Your continued support goes a long way and we are more than grateful and we look forward to sharing more of our achievements in our subsequent updates.

Thanks,

Alfred Aswan.