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Project Age Limit
Minimum 21 years, maximum decided on potential participants health.
Participant Requirements
Participants will need to be independent, motivated and willing to use their initiative throughout their time on the project. Participants should also be aware that they will be working in a poverty stricken region of rural Kenya and should be prepared for very basic conditions.
The Volunteer Programme
The Busia district suffers with a high rate of HIV/AIDS infection, with the disease spreading from the district to other parts of Kenya due to its proximity to Uganda. The effects of HIV/AIDS are causing child-headed households to increase dramatically, with children aged from 0-16 being left without parents to take care of them or their families of up to eight brothers and sisters. Many of these children are also ostracised and excluded from the local community due to the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS. Living conditions will thus deteriorate, as will their health, leaving behind malnourished and neglected children with no support or chance of a future.
The Busia project focuses on child-headed households, with volunteers helping these children to carry the burden that the AIDS epidemic has left them, since taking their parents. The orphans are unofficially “adopted” by the programme and the older children are taught various income-generating skills to ensure their new family’s survival. The project provides the orphans with proper shelter, food and school fees so that they can go back to school.
Project Activities
This project approaches issues related to poverty and HIV/AIDS through various relief strategies. These are targeted at individual families, community groups and the larger community as a whole. Your work will focus on a number of project areas, such as child nutrition, agricultural learning, shelter, health and sexual education, schooling and water sanitation.
The aims of the Kenya Community Development Project include
- Assisting child-headed households
- Providing shelter and food
- Providing emotional support
- Providing clothing and tools for basic living
- Providing skills, tools and resources to begin building a future towards sustainable, healthy and hopeful lives
- Offer relief and rehabilitation in flood plain areas
- Enabling families to become economically supported
Your role as a volunteer will be varied, according to the requirements of each family or local community you are working within. You will be working on the project 5 days a week and you will only need to travel 20 miles from your accommodation to reach the project, meaning you will have lots of time on the project to make a difference.
Once you arrive on the programme, you will be able to choose amongst the various activities and areas. You will be able to work on one of the following areas:
- Providing Emotional Support and Counselling: Staff on this project provide counselling to the orphans, to help them come to terms with the loss of their parents and the fears of their future. They will also create mentoring between families who have been successful. You will have the chance to help in these areas and provide a lot of support to the children.
- Sexual Health Education: This class is made up of project staff, foreign volunteers, pupils or students from local schools and teachers from the schools, discussing body development, sexual health and AIDS. Each of the participants is required to give his/her views about different issues that are discussed. The same programme is also undertaken in the local communities with the aim of raising awareness to the HIV and Aids pandemic whilst also reducing the stigmas associated with this illness.
- Providing Food: Help donate food to families, strengthening their health and creating a bond of trust between the local communities and families. You will provide basic food items to children, through donations and any outside funds.
- Providing Shelter: Help build or repair homes so that families have adequate and safe shelter. This provides children with a healthy place in which to live and begin their rehabilitation. One home will cost approximately £100 to buy in materials.
- Flood Relief and Rehabilitation: The Busia district has suffered greatly in the past due to the Bundalangi floods. While on the project you will be staying in a local town called Butula, which is 35 miles away from Bundalangi so is not at risk of flooding. You will however have the chance to travel to Bundalangi and areas affected by the floods to be part of a relief and rehabilitation project. During the flood season you will not travel to Bundalangi as it is unsafe, but will concentrate on activities that are based in Buhalalire, Bujumba, Bumala, and Nambale villages, where the other projects are being carried out.
- Agricultural Training: Orphans will be trained in sustainable agricultural techniques including basic land preparation, planting, crop care and harvesting knowledge for traditional crops. Other skills will also be taught, such as crop rotation, water conservation and the use of organic fertilizers. Any help in this area is vital and much appreciated!
This work will create income for the families, who are then encouraged to donate some of their seeds to the next group of orphans. This will really strengthen the bonds of the community and create a self-sustainable programme.
- Economic Empowerment: Help is needed with economic empowerment schemes that enable orphans to generate their own incomes to support themselves and their family, creating a greater sense of self-respect and effective self-sufficiency. For example, schemes such as bee-keeping projects, fishponds and chicken projects for meat and egg sales and a fantastic ‘bike taxi’ business.
- School Education: Despite there being free primary education available to the children, there are many poor children and orphans who do not attend school. There are various reasons why the children do not go to school, many of which are related to hunger. The soils in the Busia district are not agriculturally productive and the area is suffering greatly from hunger and poverty. Many children do not attend school due to the hunger that they suffer from and the long distances involved in getting to the schools each day. Other children consider that working for food is a priority and also that they need to take care of their siblings.
Your help is needed to encourage children to enter into education and also contribute to income-generating ideas so that schools may provide meals to children. You will also be valuable to classes, assisting teachers within the local primary schools and offer extra support.
- Vocational Training: The Busia project works closely with government schools in the Busia district and has recently started a vocational training centre. You may have the opportunity to pass on additional computer skills to the IT teachers or possibly start up some computer lessons with the orphans and youths. Tailoring, dressmaking and knitting is also taught, so any skills in this area are greatly appreciated.
- Water Sanitation: This project involves the protection of water springs to avail clean drinking water to the communities. You can help identify areas that need safer drinking water and assist in building the new water springs, which the whole community can benefit from.
Please Note: As there are many projects to choose from and many local communities to serve, the transfers to each area may vary: Some are just 30 minutes away from your accommodation, and others are up to an hour by car. Your programme leaders will ensure that you are taken and picked up from your project each day.
Accommodation and Meals
During your programme your accommodation will be in Butula Town, just 20 miles from the projects that you will be taking part in. You will be accommodated in a house that you will share with the other volunteers on the programme. The accommodation is basic but comfortable, quite modern and enclosed in a walled and gated compound. The volunteer accommodation is therefore safe and there are night watchmen on the site.
There are communal showers and the toilets are traditional African long drops, which are clean, but please do not expect the usual flush toilets that you may be used to! There is electricity, but power cuts are fairly frequent and water shortages may also be experienced. The projects and accommodation location are quite rural and you will have to travel for 20 miles to access the Internet and banking facilities, so please be prepared for this.
Throughout the programme you will be provided with 3 meals a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner), though you may wish to take some cash for snacks etc. The water in the area is not safe to drink so you are advised to purchase bottled water throughout your stay.
Project Support
Throughout your stay in Kenya you will have the support and guidance of our coordinator and team. The coordinators are often very busy, so you must undertake this programme with a sense of initiative and independence, to work to your own motivation and ideas a lot of the time.
In addition you will have access to a 24 hour emergency contact number so you can contact one of our UK staff at any time should you need to.
Programme Orientation
Once you have been met and picked up from the airport, you will be taken to your accommodation to settle in. Then, your coordinators will talk you through the project and help to answer any questions you may have. We advise that you spend the first few days or week exploring the various projects, to work out exactly what you would like to dedicate your time to on this rewarding experience.
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