By Crista Gray, on behalf of Catherine Wanjohi | US Volunteer on behalf of Executive Director
Beginning in February 2014, four women and six men have been working on site in Naivasha to build the first floor of the Training Center. These workers include some of the women who are part of the Life Bloom network. This continues the tradition LBSI set forth of employing the women who they are retraining from sex work, as written about in "Steps Toward Foundation Building Underway" on January 30, 2012. We are now about two years later and only a few weeks away from the first floor of the Training Center being occupied and ready for use, which includes two classrooms and some washrooms.
Let's catch you up on what's happened the last several months!
February 2014 - Laying the foundation
March 2014 - Leveling of the classroom floor in preparation of the slab pouring;
The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians-St Paul's University Kenya Chapter (the CIRCLE) and a representative of the World Council of Churches (WCC) lay stone and bless the project. What's symbolic about this? Churches in Kenya have been known to be the first to shun "sex work" (read: prostitution) and all that goes with it. Talk to any sex worker about the cause of stigma and the answer will most probably be the church. A number of churches are finally breaking this barrier and supporting processes that are supportive of the people who our societies shun. Bravo to the CIRCLE and WCC for leading the way and Bravo the Presbyterian Church of Tacoma-Washington State (USA) for the great donation. (Click here to access an article using an interview with Catherine Wanjohi (LBSI Founder) by the World Council of Churches)
25th - Halfway completed with the first floor walls
April 2014 - 12th, Building at 47% of the physical construction work (five weeks ahead of schedule!), at a total cost of approximately $14,895. (Kenya shillings 1,266,075)
21st - This first phase covers 1944 square feet or 175 sq meters. Building is now at the 1st floor slab level. There has been heavy downpour and flooding in some areas of Naivasha and it's not always prudent to have the construction going on when the manpower will be paid full day's work, yet they mostly will work for half day in April due to the downpour.
May 2014 - As work at the construction site proceeds, efforts are moving toward:
LBSI aims to have the first floor ready for use this September or before. We can still use your support to keep construction moving along. We are months away from Kenya's first training center for retraining female sex workers into entrepreneur enterprises so they can support themselves in a way that allows them to keep their heads held high. It's a model that continues to work and we look forward to training more women than ever before.
As always, we appreciate your support in all its ways, whether that be monetary, in person, in word, in voice, in thought... we are all connected and your positivity is felt and keeps us going strong.
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