Kenya, East Africa Emergency Food Distribution

Springs of Hope Foundation's Kijiji Mission Project, visited Murogi slums on the outskirts of Nakuru City to do a food distribution today. Most of the people living in the slums don’t have jobs. They depend on casual work, which is rare to come by these days with the high cost of living. The elderly have no one to look after them as their children left to look for greener pastures in other towns.  The group was anxiously waiting for our arrival and were more than grateful for our visit. They told us that most of them had no food in their homes and some had spent days on an empty stomach. Some elderly sent their grandchildren to collect the food on their behalf as they were bedridden. Pastor Ben organized the venue at a good-hearted lady’s homestead. Ivy our volunteer together with Antoinette did the distribution and all went on well as planned. All thanked the hands that giveth and asked us to visit them more often.

We are so grateful to you, our generous supporters for making our food distributions possible. Whether it’s doing our larger distributions to the more remote areas of Kenya or just reaching out to 90 of our elderly, disabled, or single moms, our neighbors in the surrounding slums. I would like to say a huge Asante Sana for your generous, continued support of our work at the Springs of Hope Foundation.

Warmest blessings,

Jennifer Hughes-Bystrom

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Jambo, Greetings,

Last Weekend Springs of Hope Foundation traveled to the border district of Mogotio, Baringo County to distribute food hampers to the elderly and vulnerable within two communities. Joining us for the distribution were Ivy, one of our volunteers who comes to our center every Tuesday afternoon to teach our students a course in business and financial management, and Elizabeth, a recent graduate of our 12-month tailoring course who is being mentored to become an assistant to our administration manager and our teacher Martha. Our first stop was at a center known as Barina, which is an internally displaced person center. We found the group anxiously waiting for us. We distributed food hampers and washable sanitary pads to the women and teen girls. One elderly lady said there are families that have slept hungry for days and are very grateful that they will have something on their table that evening and for weeks to come. We then drove another 10 km to the second village known as Sawaiti, where we distributed the remaining food hampers to the anxiously waiting crowd. They came out in numbers and although we had prepared 90 hampers for this village, some still missed out. They were very grateful for our visit and thanked and prayed for the hands contributing to the food and sanitary pads.   The fact that whatever food is available in the market has doubled in price, combined with the lack of fieldwork over the past 4 years due to drought has made it difficult for many of our food hamper recipients to be able to purchase food.

Families were tending to their plots as we drove past small family farms on our way to Baringo County, which, after 4 years of drought and failed crops is a very good sign. With the rains at hand, they have started planting beans and maize. Unfortunately, the maize won’t be ready to harvest until September, which will still cause an interim shortage of two of Kenya’s most vital food sources, maize (corn) and beans. We’re praying that the rain will continue.

I wish you could experience the great joy your kindness brings to our elderly and very needy food hamper recipients in person. These are the forgotten villages that larger aid organizations are not able to reach.  

Asante Sana,

Thank you,

Warmest blessings,

Jennifer, Antoinette, Martha, and our team of great volunteers at

www.springsofhopefoundation.org

PS. If you’ve ever thought about volunteering in Kenya, spending time visiting our breathtaking game parks, and participating in some of our projects, if you would like more information please email me at jenniferhughes@springsofhopefoundation.org.

Links:

• FACEBOOK
• WEB PAGE