Kenya Children Centres
Kenya Children Centres (KCC) has been supporting deprived children in Kenya for over 20 years. The Geoff Herrington Foundation (GHF) has been a loyal and encouraging partner as we have grown, providing funding to launch and expand three of our major programmes.
More information about these and other KCC projects can be found at https://kenyachildrencentres.com/
Home for Abandoned Babies
A baby is abandoned every week in our region of Kenya due to poverty, a dysfunctional home or rape. The Kenya government asked KCC to help, so we decided to build a home for abandoned babies.
GHF granted us £15,000 to convert part of an existing building into a professionally equipped baby home with a full complement of nursing and caring staff. It is a very cheerful place with colourful cots, lots of toys and beautiful paintings of birds, flowers and cartoon characters on every wall. The first abandoned baby was rescued into our care in May 2019.
Our KCC team provide care for each baby, deal with any health issues and give them one-to-one attention during their stay. Meanwhile our social workers work to trace the family and find a relative able to care for the child safely. If no relative can be found within six months, the County Court gives permission for the baby to be adopted by a Kenyan family.
The GHF grant has enabled us to save the lives of more than 60 babies.
Feeding centres
Hunger and malnutrition prevent physical growth, reduce school attendance, and diminish educational performance. A hot daily meal in school is the most cost-effective means of tackling these issues.
GHF gave us a grant of £8,725 in November 2019 to open our first feeding centre. The kitchen was built and equipped alongside a school in a very poor rural community and the feeding project commenced in January 2020. 67 children were selected for the lunches after home visits by our social workers. The meals that KCC provide are often the only food that the children get that day. Each child is weighed, and measured at the start and end of every term. This monitoring shows that a daily meal leads to measurable improvements in each child’s health, behaviour, academic performance and wellbeing.
The seed investment by GHF has shown the value of a hot daily meal and created a model that KCC could replicate in other communities. As a result, KCC have been able to raise funds to start similar projects alongside another seven schools in deprived rural and slum communities. The ripple effect of the GHF grant is feeding more than 1,200 destitute children every day.
Reproductive Health and Life Skills Counselling
In order to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abandoned babies, KCC decided to provide education and counselling in reproductive health and life skills for teenage girls and boys attending four slum schools. Our team of counsellors provide group education and one-to-one counselling sessions in school and at home for 1,200 children. The project has been developed with grants of £34,350 from the GHF, over four years from January 2022.
It has been a great success with significant reduction in teenage pregnancies and improvements in behaviour, school attendance, academic performance, well-being, and self-esteem. It is helping children to tackle many issues caused by negative domestic circumstances, mental health issues, and dysfunctional family relationships.
