Special Appeal for children displaced by drought

This time of year is busy for CRK as we have been getting children ready to go back to school. It is also the term in which the end of year exams take place, so the children are always more nervous about this time of year and worried about how well they will do. The social workers have therefore been checking in and offering encouragement as they leave for school. We have also been making sure that all the candidates sitting for their Kenya Certificates of Primary or Secondary Education are ready for these national examinations and have all the resources that they need. Earlier in the year we had to ake sure that they had birth certificates as some children are not registered by their parents because it csts money. But the children cannot sit for national examinations without birth certificates, and later on, when they become adults, they are unable to get ID cards without them either.

Some of the children we have been seeing off to school are from families that have been displaced by the drought that has affected the Turkana region. The work that we do with these children has been directly supported through your donations. In August we were awarded a grant from Global Giving as part of their focus on the East Africa drought and famine crisis. We are very grateful for the support from Global Giving for the project. This grant will help us to support more children who are on the street as a result of being displaced by the drought. It is also going to pay for food baskets for the displaced families in the short-term and skills training in bio-intensive agriculture methods for the parents. We aim to make the families better able to develop sustainable sources of food and income so that they can feed themselves and their children in the future.

The grant does not cover the costs of supporting the children to go to school and we are therefore keeping the appeal open while we fundraise to meet these additional costs. We will therefore continue to report regularly on our work with the young people who have been displaced.

Thank you again for your ongoing support of CRK and our work with children in Kitale.