Children Welfare and Development Program
The Child Welfare and development programme is geared specifically towards meeting the urgent needs of the vulnerable and orphaned children in our community.
Background
In the process of providing medication, care, emotional and spiritual support to HIV/AIDS patients other issues such as lack of parental attention and basic needs were observed to cause stress in children. Many of the AIDS patients were heavily burdened with worry about their children's future. This is was what one worried parent said; " I have come to terms with my HIV/AIDS condition, death is not my greatest fear but my children's uncertain future is a never ending nightmare." It was therefore considered necessary to seek support to keep these children in school and ensure thier survival. Hence the Child Welfare department was born.
Our key activities include:
We have coordinated access to the KCCC Primary School for 416 orphaned and vulnerable children. In total, we have aided 1,736 youths to primary, secondary and university education.
Counseling and guidance of the children is a very strong entry point in all our interventions. We try to find out the different problems that children face while exploring the best options available to help them overcome their difficult family situations.
Counseling has revealed to us that most children who lack the minimum school entrance requirements (and hence subsequently experience deprivation of other basic necessities of life) perform poorly at school and eventually loose interest in studying and eventually drop out of school.
Picture (above): KCCC Children's Christmas party in 2004
Regular home visits by trained counselors are made to families to assess the situation of the families (living conditions, family income, medical bills, school uniforms, rent etc ) in order to come up with the most appropriate form of assistance. It is our fundamental belief that education is necessary to escape the vicious cycle of poverty and illiteracy.