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The Volunteer Project
This programme approaches the issues related to poverty and HIV/AIDS, through various relief strategies targeted at individual families, community groups and the larger community as a whole. They focus their work upon a number of project areas, such as child nutrition, shelter, agricultural learning, health and sexual education, water sanitation and schooling. However, the primary focus and foundation of this work is centred upon the many orphans, who make up a large number of the local population.
This programme is run under the guidance of one amazing woman named Mary, who has a special place in her heart for children. What once began as a single adoption has resulted in a community development scheme, helping over 2000 people within the local community. Her vision is “for these orphans, families and communities; that each may have the ability to sustain healthy living conditions, provide for their own needs, increase their own opportunities and to continue sustainable progress and change”.
The Kenya Community Outreach project has a goal: To target approximately 500 families in 8 project areas over the next 3 years to provide vital assistance, particularly to the child-headed households and meet the immediate nutritional and living standards and conditions of these families. Child-headed households are increasing dramatically due to HIV and AIDS, leaving children aged from 0-16 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 primary aims of the programme include:
- To provide shelter and food for families
- To provide clothing and tools for basic living
- To provide skills, tools and resources to begin building towards a sustainable, healthy and hopeful future
- To provide emotional support
- To enable families to become economically supported
Your Role as a Volunteer
You will help these children from impoverished backgrounds 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 programme also provides the orphans with proper shelter, food and school fees so that they can go back to school. You role is varied, according to the requirements of each family or local community you are working within.
Once you arrive on the programme, you will be able to choose from the various activities and areas and focus your time on a specific programme. The programme is made up of basic steps and you will be able to work on one of the following:
1) 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.
2) 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.
3) Agricultural Training: With their basic needs met, orphans will now feel ready to embrace new projects. The kids 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 thus 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.
4) Providing Emotional Support and Counselling: Staff at 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 be expected to help in these areas and provide a lot of support to the children.
5) Economic Empowerment: This project has established many economic empowerment schemes, which will enable orphans to generate their own incomes to support themselves and their family, creating a greater sense of self-respect and effective self-sufficiency. Some schemes include bee-keeping projects, fishponds and chicken projects for meat and egg sales and a fantastic ‘bike taxi’ business. One bike costs approximately £30.
6) School Education: This project has built its own primary school. Due to funding, there are only 4 classrooms, built with non-permanent materials, whilst they wait to construct the main building. Your help is needed to teach these children their classes and offer extra support to the teachers. The school is aimed at helping orphans and poorer children who are excluded from the regular institutions.
There are a number of private schools in the area who have an agreement with the project to allow some orphans to attend their schools at reduced rates and through agricultural donations. They will need assistance too within their classes in a variety of subjects you can teach.
7) Vocational Training: You could provide valuable help in imparting additional computer skills to the IT teachers and possibly starting up some computer lessons with the orphans and youths in the nearby local vocational centres, developed through this programme. Tailoring and dressmaking is also taught here, so any skills in this area are greatly appreciated.
8) 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.
9) Water Sanitation: This programme 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 10 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.
Project Support
Mary and James are your programmes coordinators, and will be on hand to help you with any queries and with your projects. However, with over 2,000 people to care for, they are often very busy, and so you will need to be self-motivated and show a good deal of initiative and independence to undertake this project.
Project Orientation
Once you have been met and picked up from the airport, you will be taken to the project to settle in. Then, your coordinators will guide you through the project and help to answer any questions you may have in your orientation.
We advise that you spend the first few days or week visiting the various villages and programme areas, to work out exactly where you would like to work and dedicate your time on this rewarding experience.
Accommodation and Meals
During your stay, you will be accommodated in houses that you will share with the other volunteers on the programme. The houses are comfortable, but very basic and are 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 long drops, which are clean but do not expect the usual flush toilets that you may be used to. There is electricity, but power cuts are fairly frequent. Water shortages may also be experienced.
You will receive 3 meals each day on the project. Breakfast will consist of toast, juices, ndazi's and chapati's. Lunches will comprise of sandwiches and juice or soda, whilst dinners will be prepared for you by a designated house cook, though we ask you to offer as much assistance as possible. This meal will use traditional African ingredients, using meats, rice and breads and some vegetables. Please budget for a few snacks etc during the day.
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