This story is from our Kick and Conserve Coordinator of schools, Mr. Silwe. I hope you are going to enjoy reading as much as i have.
Menstruation is a positive indicator that a girl is maturing and has potential of being fertile. A good step in the life of one day being a mother to either a girl or a boy. The others will follow; you know grandmother foster mother – can breast feed another child from another mother when in distress.
But the menstrual flow can be a disaster. Even the eve of it, if not well prepared can traumatize. I have seen this many times, especially in school environment. More so, if the community has added some taboo inclination to it. We have to prepare, prepare and talk about it and openly to potential girls that it can happen to them. My view is that it is better done when fellow girls talk to their fellows as they interact in games, discussions and even when they walk home together from school.
As a father of many girls; three to be precise, the boys are only two, I feel for them and want to help them and want to help all girls. They should be empowered to afford to get their shield (Cheap pads – homemade) we want re- usable sanitary pads, made by themselves. We want girls to design their own re- usable sanitary pads so that they do not have to worry at all.
We do not want girls to coin excuse to borrow money from taxi operators (bodaboda) hence take advantage and “defile” them. We want to counsel them not to blindly opt for “trendy” factory made where as they can make them by themselves.
We do not want them to stay away from school, games, and now that FIFA has allowed them to play even if on periods. The good news is that it only happens three to four days in a month, that is 4/30 > 0.13% days a month. Very minimal, can’t wait to see our project kick off especially in our rural and informal settlements.
No excuse for not playing", No excuse for not interacting," "No excuse for not being busy".
Patrick Silwe is a teacher at Thomas Burke Primary; he doubles up as the coordinator of schools during kick and conserve events
Happy New Year 2021
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11th September 2020, Nairobi, Kenya
TeacherDamaris is from House of Prayer Community School in Mukuru Kwa Ruben where most of our community impact participants live. She is an enthusiast when it comes to physical edication ; “teacher Dama” as most of the pupils call her, is also the secretary of Green-Kenya committee team that is responsible for Child Protection in all the schools in we work with.
“Teacher Dama” has been taking part in community impact program weekly; helping with marking the attendance book after the sessions and ensuring that participants return to school after the session as per the requirement.
Just before the schools were closed in early March as a result of Covid, “Teacher Dama” was 3 months pregnant; her teaching was her only income. During the food donation that Green-Kenya
Conducted, “Teacher Dama” was among those who benefited from the donation. She is now in need of prenatal and antenatal healthcare to prevent low birth weight and other complications.
“Dama” has been out our radar even when there was restriction of movement; Green-Kenya had weekly calls just to offer her mental support during challenging times. At the moments, the situation has eased a bit; there is no more restriction of movement and people can move from one point to the other to work and to seek psychological health.
For this reason, we hope to spend part of the donation of little by little matching campaign that will take place on 14th – 18th September to buy for teacher Dama some of the essentials she will need during this time of her pregnancy.
We celebrate you Teacher Damaris aka “Dama” and on behalf of all our participants, our volunteers and G-K family in different parts of the world, we would like to send our positive vibe. We are in this together.
When the government through the ministry of education issued an order to close schools indefinitely and issued orders to avoid crowds and gatherings of any sort, as some of the measures to curb the spread of coronavirus, Green Kenya had to suspend operations to comply with the government order on social distancing.
Sessions were terminated halfway the month leading to the cancellation of all the sessions. By the time the sessions were canceled we had 243 participants, conducted 15 sessions with 89% attendance of the sessions in community impact program from 4 community schools.
In the quest to ensure that we helped to flatten the curve in the spread of Covid-19, we had to activate our social media platforms in order to keep the conversation going. With the help of youth leaders and volunteers in Mukuru and Shauri Moyo slums, we were able to share posters that communicated about keeping social distance, washing hands regularly, and staying at home as much as you can.
Our volunteers also had a chance to distribute food to the most affect families especially in Mukuru kwa Ruben where most of our participants reside, with the help of Green-Kenya committee team which is made up of teachers and community elders, we identified 18 families who had gone for a couple of days with only one meal a day. The distribution of food was led by teacher Damaris who is also the sports teacher at the House of Prayer community School.
While we understand that it is and not easy to stay at home for people who are leaving in communities that we work in, we strongly advised the communities to reduce the people who are going to the groceries to one person while observing all the regulations of being safe at all times. Recent statistics show that the infection rate on C children has gone up because most of them are still playing together without any personal protective equipment, for this reason, we are putting resources together to purchase 1000 masks and Distribute in Mukuru and Shauri Moyo.
I choose to be a believer in this course, we have done it before during the sessions to create a resilient, young leader and environmental stewards, it is now the time to protect ourselves to the Novel Coronavirus. Are you onboard?
In 2019, Green-Kenya Raised $2,683 on GlobalGiving to fund our vital work, $353 of which was raised by the GlobalGiving team through bonus prizes, matching money, corporate partnerships, gift card redemptions, and/or our marketing efforts! GlobalGiving has driven more funds to Green-Kenya than charged in fees, making our effective fee 0%!. We Activated 14 donors to support our work on GlobalGiving.
You help to raise an average of $75 from each donation this year. With your help, we raised $2,250 in recurring donations from 2 monthly merge15. Exchanged knowledge and built connections with peers around the world by participating in the Peer Learning Network.
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Using these selected badges, we can share with the world that Green-Kenya has been vetted by GlobalGiving, was actively engaged in the community and was a top-ranked organization in 2019! We hope that publicly sharing our badge will help us continue to gain the recognition that we deserve as a trusted partner and change-maker in the world.
We also received the GlobalGiving Staff Favorite badge, because Green-Kenya was selected by someone from GlobalGiving as their favorite! This is indicated on Green-Kenya project pages and it will show up under the GlobalGiving Staff Favorite search feature.
And because a member of Green-Kenya filled out all three Listen, Act, and Learn steps of at least one Effectiveness Cycle in GG Rewards, we ’ve earned the Effective badge. Thank you for your support in 2019, you are part of these success and we look forward to tag along in 2020!
We are conducting some of the last programs before the holiday kicks in and I thought it is important to retrospect some of the highlights that has happened so far.
Green-Kenya began its 2019 program on 5th February with Community Impact Programs (CIP) in Mukuru community schools and shauri moyo respectively. There were 4 community schools participating in CIP.
Out of the Community Impact program, Green-Kenya has been able to come up with 7 other programs that use football as a tool to address different social issues in the communit. These programs are Kick and conserve concept, Youth league, Football academy, Corporate and Community team building, Sports for social Impact Consultancy, Wasichana Juu and Leadership and Development.
Out of the 8 programs, there are 6 created exclusively for the youth and 2 that focus on both adults and youth.
Over the course of 11 months, each program has reached a significant number of both youths and adults in different communities in Nairobi, Mogotio, Mbita and Kisumu ( all in Kenya ) as well as Lilongwe in Malawi.
We have been able to reach: 324 Adults (Teachers and Coaches), 2,468 Girls and 2,465 Boys
Safeguarding the rights of all children taking part in our programs is very important for the Green - Kenya community. As such, Green - Kenya has made an effort to work with various groups and partners that take part in our programs to educate them and create awareness on the importance of protecting children’s rights. Such groups include: physical education teachers, local coaches who aspire to become sports for social impact coaches and young mothers who are now sports mentors working with adolescent girls in Nairobi’s informal settlements
A follow up on Solomon...
Out of the 2465 boys we have managed to reach and impact, is one of my good friends who, for the sake of protecting his identity, I refer to as Solomon. Solomon is a resident of Mukuru community. He came to the field when we were doing the last sessions before the schools closed for the long holidays. We had a short conversation and it is then that I realized that his younger sister had joined school but Solomon wasn’t as lucky.
We have been unsuccessful in trying to reach out to his mother to find out the cause of this unfortunate situation but, in the meanwhile ,we as Green - Kenya community agreed to try everything possible in our capacity to see to it that Solomon goes back to school next year and enjoy his right for education.
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