COVID19 HARDSHIP SUPPORT

The effects of the pandemic are now being felt more than before. Looking back on the onset of the pandemic many families survived on the savings that they had made over the years. These small savings have long been depleted and now hunger and starvation are what they battle every day.

Many low-income families from the slums in Nairobi are going hungry due to a lack of enough food to sustain the whole family. The covid 19 restrictions might have been relaxed but they did not bring back the jobs that were lost during that time. The small-scale jobs that many slum dwellers depended on to earn a living have not been returned back.

The effect is even much bigger on families that have children living with disabilities. These are families that have doubled the budget in order to accommodate the dietary requirements of their children with disabilities. The donations you have kept on giving throughout the year have been the sources of hope and food for such families coming from the Mathare slums. Step Up 4 Autism has been able to provide food packages every month to more than 30 families with children who have disabilities in Mathare slums in Nairobi Kenya. This is big and on behalf of the children that we serve we say thank you for your kindness, generosity, and consistency.May God bless you and keep you so that in the coming year we can contiune the great weokr we have done together.

Kind regards,

Ruth Tenai,

President 

Many covid 19 containment measures since the year 2022 begun have been relaxed in Kenya and in many countries around the world. This has provided an avenue for people to introspect and look afresh at the opportunities available post covid. As much as there has been a loss of jobs, there has also been the creation of some.

Slowly but surely, many small businesses are jumping back to life in Kenya. However, this only works for the middle class and not the urban poor living in Nairobi's slums and depending on a single meal a day if they are lucky. Many families living in the slums and especially those that have children with disabilities continue to suffer the consequences of the covid 19 pandemic.

We as an organization and through your support are doing our best to continue standing with such families and ensuring that they get as much help as possible. Every month, through kind donations from people like you, we are able to send food supplies to over 100 families who have kids with disabilities and are part of this project.

We continue to ask you to stand with us and the family that we support through your kind and generous donations.

Kind regards,

Ruth Tenai

The realities of the covid 19 pandemic continue to be felt in Kenya, especially during these hard economic times when the price of fuel and food has shot up overnight.

Families that have kids with disabilities and come from low-income areas continue to be hit the most . This is due to the fact that it is very expensive to have a child with disabilities due to the many needs that must be met for them.

Many of the parents who have these kids and are from low-income areas are single parents who are unemployed or have a small business that cannot meet the family demands.

Step up 4 Autism offers the kids free therapy and food packages . We continue to appreciate the help that you send to us and we say may God Bless you all.

Feel free to share our work with your friends and family .

Kind regards,

Creating awareness on autism and vaccinations is hard and this is due to the currently available misinformation on various platforms already against autism. Due to the misinformation, many cannot access the vaccines and this makes it very hard for them to go about their daily activities.

This is in addition to the challenges of food and lack of access to therapy services that the kids continue to face on normal days without the pandemic.

Access to therapy services is a big issue in Kenya and those who get access to them pay high prices. This is not affordable to kids from low-income areas who live below the poverty line. People living with autism have a need for occupational therapy, speech therapy, behavior therapy, physical therapy among others as per the need of the client.

The other challenge is food. Access to nutritious foods is a big challenge, many kids on the spectrum have challenges consuming regular foods with wheat, milk, and sugar contents. They have to be put on a nutritious diet that embraces their autism challenges.

We are calling upon you to continue giving to this project and be that shoulder to lean on in times of trouble for kids coming from low-income areas and living with challenges like autism.

Access to vaccines is a big issue here in Kenya and the larger African continent. There continues to lack of enough information on the benefits of vaccines and the vaccination points available are scarce, hard to come by, and inaccessible to people living with disabilities.

There are also not enough trained people to handle the needs of people living with autism, some of them fear needles and are not amused by the whole vaccination approach. This is due to the differences in processing the information they get and how they perceive it. This challenge stems from the viewpoint of how autism is unique in everyone who has it.

This grant and fundraiser continue to help us to make communications that are meant at easing this access to vaccines and preparing kids and adults with autism to get vaccines. It also enables us to maintain a database of those who have received the vaccination and those who haven't.

With additional funds, we will be able to get more people living with autism to be vaccinated to get them the correct information on the various vaccines available and break the information to them into segments that they will understand and be able to act on.