Provide Kibera Slum Children with 1500 Solar Lamps

LIGHT UP MY LIFE: PROVIDING CHILDREN WITH A FIRST READING OPPORTUNITY Did you know that many children in Nairobi do not own any reading books, and often do not get the chance to read? Samantha Stonewigg has partnered with Sadili Oval to create a wonderful little library for estate and Kibera children who attend Sadili’s Sports for Life programme, to get their first reading opportunity. Sam plans to put together an exciting environment that will tempt children to immerse themselves in a world of books and also instill creativity through art. You can also contribute to this amazing project in the following ways: 1. Donate books that your kids no longer need. Just drop them off at your school and we will come and pick them up. 2. On average, a reading book costs Kshs. 300, so even if you do not have the books to donate, you can send some funds. 3. We recently received a television set, so we can now show movies as well, so we welcome donations of dvds and tapes. 4. Art materials, such as paints, paper, colour pencils and crayons are also very welcome. We hope to open the doors of the children’s library and art room by the summer, and estimate that 1200 children will benefit from the learning opportunity

Great news: The French Embassy has donated enough money to keep many affected children eating for the next couple of months - hopefully, it will help stabilize them while all the chaos is going on.

In addition, they have requested that we assist with providing support to other groups in Kibera, Kisumu, Mathare, Kitale and Nakuru. Funds will be used to provide emergency feeding, build toilets, provide medicine for the sick and those with special medical illnesses, provide temporary shelter (now that the rains have begun), connect water supply, and chemicals to a district hospital mortuary. To do this, we will be working with organisations that include, Action Against Hunger, WOFAK (Women Fighting Against AIDS in Kenya), and Handicapped International. We are confident that this emergency programme from the Government of France will make a real difference at a time that many Kenyans are suffering and need a helping hand.

We are, after this stage going to need to do the following:

1. Look at ways in which we may build a soup few kitchens that will provide regular feeding for children only, to ensure that they can keep healthy. Establishing a soup kitchen will cost Kshs. 690,000 or US$ 9324 or Euros 7040.

2. Begin a healing series of counseling workshops, as many children have been traumatised by what they have seen and experienced, especially the girls. This can be done through sports and social workshops. This will require expertise, and would work best with qualified volunteers.

3. Donate towards schooling and books, to ensure that kids can continue to learn, inspite of everything. Schools have opened, but many lack the important learning materials. It will cost Euros 113 or US$ 150 per school to get shared chalk, exercise books and pens. We have isolated 34 schools within the worst hit in Kibera that are still active, at least in some reasonable way and judge that they will serve as the safest place for the children to be during the day (safety in numbers and better adult supervision).

4. Provide solar lighting to provide added security in an area that lacks electricity, which will have the added value of ensuring that children in the family can get to study. This is a part of this project in which we are hoping to provide a solar lamp each to 1500 families and after-school learning groups in Kibera, confident that it will serve to improve the learning environment and success of those families.

5. Seek clothing, toys and shoes that will assist children get through the Nairobi cold that has begun with the typical cold breeze. This has already started amongst Sadili's friends within Nairobi, and has made a reasonable impact, but much more needs to be done locally.

We are opening a well-manned coordinating office from Monday 21st January 2007 to ensure that all donations are well documented and a report is published to ensure proper accountability. We hope to run this office to the end of March 2007, when we hope that everything will have stabilised and most support services can wind down. We will, however, continue with the usual projects such as this one and the African Child Sport and Education fund (links given below).

Also do view our video at the link given below made by the children.

Sincerely,

Liz Odera

Links:

• African Child Sport and Education Fund
• Train 3000 Kibera youth in sport & life skills
• Children's Video of our project, Kibera at War