REKINDLED HOPE ORPHANS AND CARE SELF-HELP GROUP
(REHOC)
TITLE:
Nutrition Education and Care for a better tomorrow.
PROJECT LOCATION:
AFRICA: KENYA
RANGWE-HOMA BAY DISTRICT
LEGAL STATUS:
REGISTERED WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF KENYA: DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES
HOMA-BAY DISTRICT.
REGISTRATION NO-SH: 00001/2352
CONTACT PERSON
GRACE ADHIAMBO ASIMBA –Center Manager
P.O BOX 66,
RANGWE, KENYA
Tel. +254 721 994106
Acronyms-
1. REHOC –Rekindled Hope Orphans and Care Self Help Group
2. OVC -Orphaned and Vulnerable children
3. HIV -Human immune Deficiency Syndrome.
4. AIDS -Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
5. MDGS -Millennium Development Goals.
VISION
A community based organization/group that is committed to providing hope of better tomorrow to orphans and vulnerable children by providing them with basic needs and education for a brighter future.
MISSION
To provide at least a meal a day (food), formal education, protection, health care and psychological support to orphaned and vulnerable children through; linkages, well wishers and donors. This is meant to assist these innocent but unfortunate children to have a hope of a better tomorrow and a prosperous society.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This program is expected to
- To promote proper nutrition by ensuring that the young deserving orphans and vulnerable children especially total orphans within the geographical area covered, who are not able to get food are assured of at least a square meal a day at their respective schools, or at their households(for those who are too young to go to school)
- To enhance health standards among them by taking appropriate preventive and curative measures on the children who have no responsible adult guardian/s capable of offering the same. REHOC will do this by ensuring that they are immunized on time, provided with mosquito nets, clothing, beddings, drugs and medical attention whenever necessary.
- To promote their welfare by ensuring that orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) who have attained school going age are able to have a set of school uniform.
- To promote education by assisting the high school and college going orphaned students with school fees to cater for their education.
- Reduce the high drop-out rates that are brought about by lack of school fees resulting from loss of one or both parents, at all levels.
- Develop linkages that will help build capacities of widows, widowers, orphans and care givers in a sustainable manner: including training on best agricultural practices, training on cheap locally available food, training on best nutritional practices
- Proving counseling and engaging the orphaned children in joint extra curricular act ivies that make them feel loved, cared for and appreciated by the society.
- Liaising with other organizations in providing legal redress for the OVC who have either been abused or disinherited because of the loss of their parents.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Rekindled Hope Orphans and Care Group is an organization formed and managed by adult orphans, widows, widowers and volunteers .The orphans fortunately had a chance of attaining advanced level of education (college) through sacrifices made by; guardians and assistance of well wishers. This group of orphans went through difficulty in attaining their education. In many occasions they went without: decent clothes, food, and enough money for school fees and ability to access medical care.
A group of former orphans who were beneficiaries of the above mentioned women group’s communal acts of charity and sacrifices came up with an idea of forming a group that would effectively champion for the needs of the orphans and vulnerable children in the villages, hence Rekindled Hope Orphans and Care Group (REHOC) with the main aim of rekindling the lost hope of the orphans who had been neglected. They were inspired by the following factors:
· The sacrifices that were made on their behalf by the community and guardians to make sure that they attained formal education against all odds specifically grinding poverty.
· The realization of the expanded opportunities and advantages accrued from attainment of formal education, using their cases as a testimony to the same.
· The suffering that they witnessed the orphans and other children undergoing due lack of basic needs like food, clothing, shelter and medical care with many succumbing to the effects of the aforementioned issues at very tender ages.
· Increasing and unchecked drop out rates among the orphaned children in the rural areas, as a result of their social status.
· The burden that the widows and old grand parents among other guardians bore due to the death of sole bread winners in their immediate or extended family members. When they are left with unmanageable number of orphans to care for.
REHOC is involved in several but unique projects to orphans and vulnerable children. These projects include;
1. Provision of food (at least a meal) per day for those who cannot access food.
2. Provision of clothing
3. Provision of school uniforms
4. Provision of basic medial care (preventive and curative)
5. Provision of school fees for those who are in high school and colleges.
6. Provision psychological support to those who cannot cope with their new status.
All these projects are not done in a formal orphanage home (set-up) because of possible financial and logistical costs that may be involved in running of a home/orphanage. The running/management of the groups’ program is done centrally but the services are taken to the doorsteps of these Orphaned and vulnerable Children (OVC), the direct beneficiaries.
Working with a network of; widows, widowers, adult orphans and volunteers across an area covering 12(twelve) villages. REHOC operates with 4 (four) full time and two part time members, besides the 7 (seven) volunteers in working in the 7 feeding centers. The staff that doubles as members is assigned specific duties/roles to enhance attainment of the group’s goals. The widows and the volunteers work at their respective feeding centers organize and prepare meals/lunch through the schools that the beneficiaries attend. Besides that the volunteers collect daily information from the guardians and teachers on the health status both mental and physical so that the group is able to cater for their needs of each case in time. With this method, it is easy to keep track of the beneficiaries in the program besides encouraging them to go to school. This method also helps in managing the expansive geographical area that is covered by the program.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Poverty, ignorance, malnutrition and diseases are some of the major challenges that are putting many developing nations to their knees, the ultimate result of this is hunger and high mortality rates especially among the children who are abandoned or orphaned in the process. In Africa, these problems are more prevalent in slums and rural areas/villages. To break the vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance and diseases, it has been proved that the surest way is through education and capacity building especially to the younger generation. (Investing in the upcoming generation), children fall in this category. Unless every member of a society is able to attain at least basic education then these obstacles will always continue to stand on their way by claiming more lives and causing more suffering leading to a scenario whereby Sub Saharan Africa will still lag behind in attaining the much hyped Millennium Development Goals [MDG’s] that were pledged by the United Nations member states. Sub-Saharan Africa will remain plagued with unimaginable suffering as the rest of the world progresses.
For sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Kenya, the trend is more disturbing, close examination and analysis proves that HIV/AIDS has rendered many children parentless (orphaned) hence bringing up a generation of children who are malnourished, ignorant, sick, neglected and hopeless since they cannot afford to have proper nutrition, have clothes, access medical care, have formal education and feel loved .Unless this is nipped in the bud , this kind of hopelessness will not only face them during their childhood but will stalk the into the future, more severe and multi faceted . They are predisposed to future biting poverty i.e. if they are lucky to survive their harsh childhood. The societal problems like criminal activities will obviously increase.
In Kenya where our community based organization REHOC is situated, the official government statistics which is mostly conservative paints a very desperate picture. The number of orphans and Vulnerable Children in Kenya has been increasing over the years and likely to increase if the trend continues unabated. In an estimated population of over 40 million people, there are over 3.1 million Orphans 47% of these are as a result of HIV/Aids many more outside this figure remain vulnerable (Ministry of Planning and vision 2030 2009). HIV/Aids compounded with high poverty levels have aggravated the situation of the orphaned and vulnerable children in Kenya and Africa in general; the society is overwhelmed by the high numbers of orphans mostly arising from HIV/Aids. Extended families can no longer guarantee safe passage through childhood to independent adulthood to these children. This has made everyone to return to their nuclear families leaving these orphans to either depend on their weak poverty stricken grandparents or well wishers, the problem is so widespread that even the once, close knit African societal ties have broken down under the heavy load of unmanageable numbers of orphaned children :when the extended family systems weakens in a society, most children find themselves without proper social support immediately there is incapacitation or death of their parents. Orphans suffer stigma, stress and trauma in addition to loss of parental love, care and protection and more often they are disinherited. Children affected by HIV/Aids are therefore vulnerable long before their parents die. Girls in particular, assume the caring responsibilities for their ailing parents besides parenting for their siblings. For boys, those who are old enough go to urban areas to fend on garbage under the banner of street children. This desperate situation deny them a chance to access basic needs such as proper health care, education, shelter and nutrition..
In Kenya despite the very comprehensive programs the government has put for; HIV/Aids mitigation and control, free primary education and poverty eradication: orphans are a forgotten lot; they have been neglected by the government and other agencies. The rural based orphans are even more unprivileged than their urban counterparts; they go hungry on daily basis, suffer and succumb to preventable and curable diseases. Most disturbing is that they have to swallow a bitter pill of not going to school despite the thirst for education and their evident academic abilities. They suffer, rot and die from diseases compounded with missed opportunities. These are problems that are ever escalating and soon will reach crisis levels.
Realizing the importance of effective social protection strategies for the orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), REHOC decided to come up with a comprehensive framework in addressing the needs of this special category of group. REHOC came up with the program to provide hope to this hopeless generation of young innocent children who cannot manage to have a meal, who drop out of school because they cannot have fees, who suffer from curable/preventable diseases and stay without cloths because they cannot afford to have one.
REHOC therefore takes the task of helping these orphans and vulnerable children by pulling resources together from the community, well wishers and donors to help support orphans and vulnerable children without necessarily bringing them to a children’s home/orphanage but in their respective localities, households or schools that they attend. (Home based care for those who are too young to go to school)
All these calls for a concerted effort from all stake holders of whom REHOC is already building partnerships with including but not limited to: School administrators in various schools, church leaders, volunteers, guardians among other agencies.
The final part is to fundraise for the OVC who have managed to go through primary school or high school but lack fees to proceed to the next level.
JUSTIFICATION
In an effort to assist the orphans and vulnerable children, the most ideal way to do it would have been to have a fully fledged children’s home or an orphanage so that they can be under one roof where there is a more close attention on them besides having a feeling of belonging by staying and sharing with fellow children who are undergoing the same tribulations. It would also be easier to prepare meals jointly in one set-up. However the cost of running such a facility is always a tall order especially when funds and other resources are not readily available. It will need time and enough funding to come up with that kind of a set up which will bring all these children together under one roof where they can share their experiences and encourage each other. This kind of setting will have a lot of logistics involved and must be sustainable in long run; the facilities and donors must always be in place ready to fund putting up of such a facility and that can take quite some time to be in place.
The urgency to put on hold or reduce the untold suffering of this group of children could not wait, and something had to be done very first. The steps and actions taken by the widows group to offer their services was a wake up call for the community especially the beneficiaries of their initiative of sacrifice and act of charity. This therefore was an idea to lend a hand to the widows in their endeavor not by increasing the cost of achieving it or making it more complex but by making it more inclusive, sustainable and diverse in services. (Making it better, cheap and effective)
Widows group had been very effective in their activities despite of their status, the program had been cost effective and would have not been possible if they opted for a full fledge children orphanage (home).Because of varied expertise among these beneficiaries, which include skills in project management, qualified social workers, certified public Accountants, teachers and qualified counselors. This group of beneficiaries felt that the only way to give back to the community is by joining together with the widows in the bid to help these children realize their dreams while freely using their skills to make this program a success story in the whole region.