Supporting the Kakamega Orphans Care Centre

JUNE 2019 NEWSLETTER

Healthy Food, Healthy Minds, 

Healthy Families

Social worker Lucy’s comments get students laughing at 2nd annual High School Life-Skills Retreat.

In this issue, we are happy to share exciting news of the expanded “Seed Project,” a program that empowers guardians and families to grow an abundance and variety of healthful foods. We hope you will smile with the Care Centre’s high school students as we look back at their December retreat. We provide a sneak peak of the Rotary-funded Healthy Homes program, and we introduce several new members of the Care Centre staff.

A guardian grows sweet, vitamin-rich butternut squash for the first time.

The seed project enables the families of home-based and Care Centre children to grow healthy food for their use and to sell. It started many years ago to provide some families with seed and fertilizer and has since grown to be a major part of what KOCC does for all the children from its 121 home-based families and 38 Care Centre families.

Recently, guardians from these families attended three workshops and hosted two on-farm visits from agriculture advisors. To help them follow-through with the professionals’ recommendations, they each received a $50 stipend for seed and fertilizer. This year’s workshops introduced a new focus on nutrition and growing a variety of fruits and vegetables for a healthier family.  

The first workshop focused on best practices for growing maize (the staple grain for Kenyans), including methods from both conventional and organic agriculture. A nurse conducted part of the second workshop focusing on children’s nutrition. Then our agriculture educator Alfred encouraged guardians to plant small plots of the nutrient-rich crops recommended by the nurse, offered guidance for growing them, and distributed starter packets of seeds to each family. The third and final workshop covered fruit-trees as an income opportunity and source of healthy additions to children’s diets. Alfred and his three assistants visited each home twice to answer questions, offer encouragement and problem solve.

At the end of the workshop series, the guardians went home with starter packets of carrots, butternut squash, amaranth, and nightshade, as well as runners for vitamin-rich orange sweet potatoes, two papaya seedlings, and one each of mango and orange seedlings (the higher-value and higher-yielding grafted type, grown at local agricultural colleges). Each family has also committed to at least one income-generating agricultural activity, such as keeping poultry, planting trees for timber, or growing groundnuts and vegetables for sale.

Perhaps the greatest success of the Seed Project has been the formation of mini-clusters in local areas, whereby small groups of eight to twelve guardians get together to discuss their shared challenges in agriculture and work together to find solutions.

Above, guardians receiving grafted orange, mango, and papaya seedlings.

A guardian shows off her family's new pit latrine and shiny, leak-free roof.

The Healthy Homes project collaborates with family guardians to improve household conditions so that children have a healthy and safe place to call home. 

The Rotary-funded pilot project is providing construction materials to 17 families, who will also contribute labor, wood, and other necessities for an improved home. The goal of the Healthy Homes project is to ensure that all children from these families have access to certain basics including a leak-free roof, a pit toilet, a private bathing area, and a cooking place that will not fill the home with smoke. In our next newsletter, we look forward to sharing more photos, more info, and a few inspiring stories.

High school students sharing their feelings in a small discussion group.

With funding from our partner Crossroads Springs Africa (CSA), high school students supported through Kakamega Orphans Care Centre (KOCC) were invited to attend the second-annual retreat in December during their holiday break. The 55 high school students sponsored through Friends of Kakamega joined their 120 CSA counterparts at a boarding high school on the edge of Kakamega Town for three nights and four days, where they listened to speakers and presenters, engaged in small-group discussions, and had fun together hanging out, playing sports, and competing in a talent show competition.

Presentations and discussions covered areas such as realistic career choices, employment vs. small business, agriculture as a common opportunity for youth, and giving back to the community. Some of the Care Centre graduates stopped by and shared their experiences from early adult life. In the afternoons, students broke into small discussion groups and worked together to tackle topics such as corruption, the youth sports-betting craze, safe sexual health, and the good and bad aspects of social media. Later, each group’s chosen representative presented their solutions to the whole assembly. Students received awards for the best answers, top academic performance, and academic improvement. Good company, good food, and engaging activities make the annual retreat a popular event with the students. We hope that attenders left with a better grasp on handling the challenges they face in everyday life.

We are grateful to the entire KOCC staff for working so hard to make this event possible.

From left: Gloria Aluvala, Beryl Busolo, and Ben Kevin Ouma.

Congratulations and welcome to the Care Centre’s four newest staff members.

Gloria Aluvala, who trained as a social worker and did an internship at KOCC, took on the role of administrative assistant and first point of contact for visitors, while also helping with social work projects. Ben Kevin Ouma, who trained as a primary school teacher, joined the Care Centre residence program as educational coordinator and helps the kids with their school work. Beryl Busolo is with the Care Centre on a temporary basis to run the Healthy Homes project; she is a KOCC grad with a degree in public health and a professional background in project management.

Care Centre cleaner Anne Muhonja harvests vegetables from the demonstration "sack gardens" behind the dining hall; Anne is the Care Centre's longest-serving staff member with 16 years on the job.