Bring Hope to 750 Children and Families in Kenya

Thank you to everyone who has supported PLAS and followed our work.

After two years, the second phase of our HOPE program in Homa Bay County, Kenya, has come to an end. Together with our local partner, we worked with 20 children and their families, combining counseling for children with livelihood support for caregivers through poultry farming.

HOPE focused on two important goals: helping children imagine and shape their own futures, and helping their families build the capacity to support those dreams.
Two years later, we are seeing encouraging changes.

Imagining a future beyond school
One of HOPE’s goals was to help all 20 children complete primary school and continue to secondary school. We are very happy to share that all 20 children have now entered secondary school.

But staying in school was only part of the journey.
At the beginning of the program, none of the children said they had a clear plan for a future career. Through counseling, they had opportunities to think about their strengths and weaknesses, practice goal-setting and decision-making, and explore possible careers. They also joined career talks with adults working in different professions.

By the end of the program, 75% of the children said they had a very specific and clear career plan, while the remaining 25% said they had a somewhat clear plan.

Changes were happening at home, too.
At the beginning of HOPE, none of the caregivers gave the strongest response when asked whether they talked with their children about future education and dreams. By the end of the program, that figure had risen to 85%.
The children are not only going to secondary school. They are beginning to imagine what may come next—and to talk about those dreams with their families.

Growing a livelihood, one step at a time
While the children participated in counseling, caregivers learned how to build a more sustainable livelihood through poultry farming.
Over two years, each household received a total of 85 chicks and learned about poultry care, disease prevention, feed production, sales, accounting, and household financial management.

By the latter half of the program, most families were able to use profits from selling chickens to purchase their next chicks themselves. Income from poultry farming was also used to support children’s education, including school fees, uniforms, and school supplies.

Toward the end of the program, participants told us that they wanted to learn more about poultry farming.
Their questions were practical: How can we prevent disease? How can we reduce feed costs? How can we earn more profit?

These questions reflected an important change. Participants were no longer simply raising the chickens provided through the program. They were thinking about how to continue and improve poultry farming themselves, using the knowledge and skills they had gained.

Pamela’s next dream: a cow, then a donkey
One participant who shows this change is Pamela.
When we visited her home in April, Pamela shared that she had sold 10 of the chickens she had raised. When asked what had changed most since joining HOPE, she answered, “Income.”

She was already thinking about her next step: buying 20 chicks with her own money and keeping some chickens for breeding.
When we visited again three months later, Pamela had turned that plan into action—and taken another step forward.
She had purchased additional chicks with her own money. She had also used income from poultry farming to buy goats. By July, the number of goats she was raising had grown to 11, including young goats.

Then she shared her next goal:
“Next, I want to buy a cow. After that, I want to have a donkey.”
Her journey has not always been easy. She has lost chickens to disease and faced rising feed and grain prices. Still, she continues poultry farming while gradually expanding into raising other animals.

Pamela’s story shows that the change created through HOPE is not only about income. It is also about being able to think about the next goal—and take steps toward it.

Carrying HOPE forward
HOPE has also taught us important lessons. Poultry farming alone can be vulnerable to challenges such as disease and rising feed prices.

We are carrying these lessons into our current HARMONY program, which combines poultry farming with agriculture so families can develop more than one source of income.

The HOPE program has ended, but the journeys that began through it continue.

Twenty children are starting a new chapter in secondary school, each with their own hopes for the future. Their families, too, are continuing to build their livelihoods step by step.

Thank you for walking alongside PLAS, our local partners, and the families and children we work with. Your support is part of the warm community that makes these positive steps possible. We hope you will continue to follow their journeys and the new futures they are creating.

For small-scale farmers, knowing how to manage their land well can make a big difference to their livelihoods. But when access to new agricultural technologies and information is limited, farmers may have to make important decisions based mainly on experience and guesswork.

The BLOOM program aims to help parents strengthen their livelihoods and create a more hopeful future for their children through agricultural support combined with group counseling.

In April, BLOOM introduced a new opportunity to CBO(Community-Based Organizations): training on a portable soil testing kit.

“Now we can make decisions based on facts.”

Around 30 members of a small-scale farming group in Nyatemba Village had been facing declining crop yields for some time. Until then, they had been applying fertilizer without knowing enough about the condition of their soil. As a result, fertilizer costs increased, reducing the profits they could earn from farming.

During the training, an agricultural expert explained how to use the portable soil testing kit and demonstrated it directly in the field.

The kit makes it possible to test soil on-site and quickly check its pH and key nutrients at a relatively low cost. By understanding the condition of their soil, farmers can make more appropriate decisions about fertilizer use instead of relying only on assumptions.

One group representative reflected on the change:

“Before, we were just relying on guesswork. Now we can make decisions based on facts. We are grateful to the agricultural expert who opened our eyes.”

The training also helped participants deepen their understanding of how soil testing can inform fertilizer management. This gave them a more positive outlook on their future farming activities.

Being able to understand and manage their own farmland can also help participants build confidence and take greater ownership of their livelihoods.

Learning from both progress and challenges

The training also highlighted some challenges that BLOOM needs to address.

Although the participants who attended showed strong interest in agriculture and a willingness to put what they learned into practice, participation was lower than expected. Limited time and difficulties maintaining concentration during the training were also identified as challenges.

These lessons will help BLOOM improve future support. The program is considering working more closely with community leaders to encourage participation earlier, making training content simpler and easier to understand, and holding agricultural training and counseling sessions separately.

Through these improvements, BLOOM will continue working to make its support more effective and relevant to the needs of the community.

For the participants, this training was one step toward moving from decisions based on guesswork to decisions informed by what they can learn about their own soil.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about the BLOOM program and the changes taking place in the community. Your interest and support help us continue working toward a future where children can receive an education and children and caregivers can look ahead with greater confidence.

We hope you will continue to follow the journey of BLOOM.