Rusinga Island – Kenya, Africa
Objective – to spend time with the people of the village, to create relationships with them and hear their needs and empower them to become sustainable through the use of micro-loans and small business efforts.
Outcome – partnering with our friends at Journey 4 Youth, we restructured the existing lunch program. Previously, the program fed 37 children lunch throughout the school week (1 child from every family) – upon leaving, using the exact same allocated finances, we were able to provide one meal a day to every person in all 37 families, plus 4 widows (approximately 150 people).
Micro-loans and business plans were established for about a dozen women.
Student fee’s were paid and uniforms were purchased for dozens of children who were previously out of school due to finances.
One child received life saving medical treatment. Yucabeth was found to have severe burns covering her arm. Due to poor sanitation, her arm became infected and she had a high fever due to the infection. She spent 3 weeks in the local hospital, which was about 3 miles away from her home.
One family received a new home before rainy season. Their previous home was a mud hut about the size of most people’s bathrooms. Three children and one mother lived here. The walls and floor were decomposing, they used a trash bag for the door, the roof was poorly attached due t the decomposing wall structure. With the rains coming, they would been without proper shelter to keep them safe and dry, at the very least. We hired several men from the village to build the new home, which served to benefit them with paid work.
