Kakuma Refugee Camp Holistic Support

IsraAID Kenya's Community Outreach Workers' provide psychosocial support, referrals, and other advice to people living in Kakuma Refugee Camp. This is Regina's story:

My name is Regina and I am Congolese but living in Kakuma Refugee Camp. I am a single mother of eight children, and my eldest daughter recently gave birth. At the time she gave birth to her daughter, she was living outside of the camp. Due to mental health challenges, she was not coping well so left her daughter with me.

Together with seven children and one grandchild we live here in Kakuma and depend on food rations. At first, it was difficult to receive rations for my granddaughter as she was not registered under my care, I tried many different offices but nothing seemed to be helping and I lost hope.

When IsraAID Community Outreach Worker Hussein knocked on my door, I told him he wouldn’t be able to help me because I had already tried in every way to add my granddaughter but didn’t succeed. But Hussein didn’t lose hope and returned another to discuss other possibilities, sharing with me me important information and options. In that moment, I didn't react, but after he left I started to think about everything he had told me and began seeing a possible solution from far. I thought that maybe God sent this person here, but even still, I felt discouraged. On a third visit, Hussein asked me ‘’if not you, who can help this girl?’’ I started crying, and right there and then I decided to try again.

I used the information that Hussein shared with me and eventually was able to finally add the girl to my ration card. After six months of agony, the child can now receive her ration from UNHCR. I thoughts it was a dream and I returned home singing and smiling. The following day, when I saw Hussein coming from afar, I started crying. When he arrived at my home I told him “Hussein, I succeeded. Thank you so much, and thank you IsraAID.”  I cannot donate to others, but I can be an ambassador for IsraAID to my community.

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This November, IsraAID's Chief Development and Communications Officer visited IsraAID's team in Kenya:

Last week, I traveled to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, which recently turned 30 years old. Everyone we met spoke of just one thing: The drought.

Heartbreakingly, the Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Four failed rainy seasons – with a real worry for a fifth – only exacerbate the dangerous lack of access to safe water in the area, which is home to some 250,000 refugees at the Kakuma camp, as well as a host community of 320,000.

In the camp, where IsraAID has worked for more than a decade, groundwater is accessed through boreholes with a tap attached. The water is turned on two to three days a week, for two to three hours at a time. With no formal water distribution system, the population has no idea when the water will come. When it does flow, they must be ready to queue for hours, and someone must always be available to stand in line. There are only 24 boreholes to serve more than 200,000 people.

Our home visit to Tisha, an intelligent and friendly 14-year-old girl, was interrupted when the neighbor shouted that the water had been switched on. As the designated person staying home on standby – and therefore not at school – Tisha had to drop everything and run.

In the surrounding community of Turkana, the water situation is even more dire. Whereas the refugee community is provided with basic services according to international standards, the host community here does not qualify.

There is no official provision of water. In fact, there are a mere 12 boreholes that serve this entire community, many of which are broken, forcing people to walk for miles to dig into dry seasonal riverbeds. And while waterborne illnesses, such as acute diarrhea, have spiked from drinking untreated water, this is not just about water.

Cases of malnutrition, particularly among children, have skyrocketed. The doctor at the refugee camp said that cases have reached a four-year high, topping 253 acutely malnourished children in one month.

Of course, most of the food rations that refugees receive rely on water to cook – rice, pulses, beans – and due to the drought, rations were cut to 52% of what is needed per household. While world leaders discuss (worthy) long-term fintech solutions for carbon trading over a glass of wine, children across the region are growing increasingly vulnerable.

The drought has caused a significant increase in child protection issues. Caregivers now spend much of their day in pursuit of water. Children are left alone for long periods of time. In other cases, it is the children who walk for hours to find riverbeds. When they travel further afield – often to unfamiliar territory – they face a real risk of sexual violence from predators who wait near water sources.

Organizations, such as ours, are out there, in both the refugee and host communities every day. In arduous conditions, the humanitarian groups are providing transformative psychosocial support and child-friendly spaces that host hundreds of children every day, giving urgently needed respite to parents. And of course, new water programs are being installed, which will go on to provide safe water to thousands.

Our work, however, is but a drop in a very dry ocean. It demands attention. It demands support. As the world’s media obsesses over the suits and the speeches, it’s time to refocus away from the words of tomorrow, and back onto the much-needed actions of today.

Over the past few months, IsraAID Kenya has been expanding our response to the drought, surveying and making plans to drill more boreholes, addressing cases of malnutrition and protection concerns via home visits, as well as continuing our usual activities to offer children and adults skills training, mental health support, and access to medical services.