2020 was an extremely challenging year and we had to adapt our projects to the collateral damages provoked by the Corona pandemic.
Enclosed you find an overview of our current projects
Emergency Aid – Feeding Program
As many children in Cambodia and Kenya could not attend school because of national lockdowns, we supported local feeding programs in the Slums of Kitengela together with Agnes Gitonga who bought food and distributed it locally to her community.
Cambodia
In Cambodia we collaborated with local ngo avec and we were able to provide 30 families with emergency kits containing mosquito nets, rice, noodles, fish and soja sauce, soap and bast fiber mats. We had met these families who literally live on a dumpsite the year before and were shocked to see their living conditions.
Slums Kitengela
School and Women’s Vocational Training
WeCare-Association has been actively supporting Masai communities in the Rift Valley southeast of Kenya’s capital Nairobi for more than ten years. Our primary goals are to provide needy people with the ability to help themselves and to help them develop their self-esteem.
We began to support two projects by a wonderful mother-daughter team in Kitengela. The mother, Jane Gitonga, has been running a private primary school in Kitengela since 2014. The kids in the 10 grades originate from the slums of Noonkopir (Kitengela). These children are facing abuse, domestic violence, illness (HIV) and perpetual lack of financial ressources. Currently, 180 children attend her school and the the entire system depends on donations. Often, there is not enough money to pay for the teachers’ salaries and the rent. The school desperately needs furniture, teachers, schoolbooks, electricity, computers and food. Jane Gitonga who also acts as the principal of the primary school in Kitengela was very worried when her school was closed due to the lockdown. All of a sudden, 180 children were without a daytime structure, without education and above all without the only fix meal per day. And there were even more dramatic collateral damages: We heard from young girls willing to sell their bodies for a meal. Consequently, the number of teenage pregnancies was rising which always results in the end of the school education for the moms-to-be. As the social sanctioning mechanism of the school went missing, more cases of female genital mutilation were reported as well.
Daughter Agnes Gitonga runs a vocational training center for young women and strives not only to provide them with a training which will potentially provide them with a source of income but also to improve their self-esteem. So far, she managed to organize the training of 100 tailors and 40 hairdressers. Her project is also entirely financed by donations.
Femmes des rizières – Social Brand
This project aims to provide young tailors with a perspective to become financially independent by supporting them to develop and market products under the “Femmes des rizières” brand. Please visit www.femmes-des-rizieres.com .
