Therapy and Food for children with Autism in Kenya

We are forever grateful; for the unconditional support that you, our donors through this GlobalGiving platform have given to us since we began this project in 2017. Each day we continue to reach out to vulnerable children with special needs and who come from homes that live in poverty and we provide them with free therapy services .services include occupational therapy to help them be able to adapt to the basics of life like tying their shoelaces, moving around by themselves and many other self-reliant activities. another service that we provide includes s[each therapy, education, and play therapy. These services when you go to a mainstream hospital they become very expensive for the children we serve who are primarily from the Nairobi slums of Mathare,kariobangi , Dandora, and huruma. We manage to reach out because you donate to us wholehearted and for that reason alone we say thank you and God bless you.

The coronavirus has presented a big challenge to us and the work that we do. by birth, the children with social needs have alow immunity system compared to those who are not of special needs. they are more susceptible to diseases such as COVID 19.we are doing our best to limit contact but still ensure the children get the therapy services which according to us are essential and very much required especially during these hard times.

in a special way, we appeal to you to donate more to this project so that we also rollout food care packages to the families who have children with special needs in Nairobi.

thank you.

yours sincerely Ruth Tenai

president and founder step up 4 autism.

We began this journey of making a difference in the year 2017 with you. our main concern and still is up to date is how children with special needs can access the medical therapies they need to make their lives better. We are talking about occupational therapy, physiotherapy, play therapy, speech therapy, and behavior therapy. these services we offer to children with autism, cerebral palsy, down syndrome and other special needs conditions. We support the parents of children with special needs under our program by giving them counseling and from time to time foodstuffs.

we have been able to run this project because you have walked with us and supported us by giving donations to our project. we are having an increased number of children being referred to our therapy center in Mathare and we are only able to cater to a few of them. We would like you to help us more by referring your friends and family to continue giving to this project and in turn, we will be able to bring more parents and children into the project. Mathare, the area we serve is a big slum in Kenya which has lots of informal settlements, extremely high rates of unemployment and big poverty levels. the parents under our program cannot afford to take care of their children who have special needs conditions and therefore purely depend on the generosity of people like you through this project to give hope and better the condition of the children. with the donations we continue to receive, we will be able to buy more therapy equipment, hire more specialists and buy them food.

Will you continue this journey with us by making a donation?

We as Step Up 4 Autism continue to be thankful for all the support we get from the GlobalGiving community. The funding through the donations continue to be put into good use and the results are amazing. We have added ten more children to our therapy project and this means ten more families who are forever grateful for the work that we do. These are ten more families living below two dollars a day and continue to have the daily challenges of affording a meal leave alone education and health care attention for their children with special needs. Our project and through the help of the GlobalGiving family of donors are able to offer all the children with autism and other special needs in Mathare Slums in Nairobi City Kenya free expert therapy .therpay means they get to have a well-trained speech therapist help them get skills to enable the nonverbal to communicate and also an occupational therapist to help them get the basics of the day to day life and improve their ability to relate to the environment.

The money you give to this project truly does make an impact in a child with special needs life. For every dollar, you put into this project a child with special needs gets access to therapy services and education for the parents for free. We intend to expand the program in the next three months to invite more parents to bring their children with special needs to therapy .this will only be possible if you, the kind and the compassionate person reading this holds our hands and the hands of the children that we serve. Your generosity and kindness is something we will remember you for. Wherever you are please know it in your heart that indeed you do make a difference 

The amazing work that we have going on in Nairobi Kenya is thanks to you the global giving community. For the past three months we have been able to access an additional number of 10 more children who we have reached and are now getting the therapy services from our team of occupational therapists and doctors for free.

these are children with special needs who are from very disadvantaged and poor backgrounds and from the slums. Their parents live below two dollars a day and they have to make very hard financial decisions between providing the children with food or therapy.

We as an organization through volunteers we have been able to make a difference and step into the situation and offer free quality therapy to children with autism.

We might be doing a great job with the very limited resources that we have access to but we know that with enough and consistent funding we will be able to cover the whole country.This is abig dream which we cannot achieved without each and everyone of you holding our hands and walking with us.

The over 80 children that we have impacted so far say thank you and God bless you.

Regards,

Ruth Tenai

We begin by sending warm thank yous and love to all those who are walking with us in this journey of making a difference in the lives of children with special needs.

For the past three months alone that is February, March, and April we have been able to offer free therapy consistently every week to thirty children. these are children who come from families where the breadwinner in one and earns less than two dollars a day, therefore, cannot afford the full charges of therapy in the mainstream hospitals.

the difference that we continue to make is mainly because there are people who have made a conscious decision to walk with us and support us. These are our volunteers, our kind donors from this platform global giving and the parents that embraced our services.

we however still face challenges like not being able to provide the children with something to bite as they come for the therapies and some of them due to the nature of their disability requires transport, we currently don't have our own means of transport. We would love to have our own means of transporting the children.

Wherever you are please continue supporting this initiative as we continue to impact more lives.Thank you.