WEMIHS, an organisation with 16 years of experience working for positive change in Kenya's most marginalized rural communities, wants to help 20 vulnerable communities in Kitui county to improve access to quality early childhood development. Interventions aim to improve children's nutrition, stimulate learning & play to improve school readiness, increase coverage of health services for under-fives, strengthen referral services for abuse & violence as well as leverage resources from local Govt.
In 20 communities of Mwingi North in Kitui County in Eastern Kenya, a semi-arid area, where most families depend on agriculture to earn a living, & women often spend a great deal of time in the fields, young children often spend the day trekking in the hot sun after their mothers. When time comes for the children to go to primary school, these children are ill prepared, having missed out on the benefits of early childhood education and development & often drop out, which perpetuates poverty.
WEMIHS seeks to expand community involvement that sustain and grow quality early childhood services through supporting:1) Skills to increase income generation & building assets that help vulnerable families 2) Training & skills for care givers on early childhood care & positive parenting 3) Mobilizing community engagement with local authorities to leverage greater ECD & protective services for their children from Govt. 4) Building skills of ECD volunteers & teachers to sustain 20 ECD centres.
WEMIHS aims to enable communities to respond to early childhood development needs that have long term impact on the health & well being of their children. Increase # of children from vulnerable households accessing early childhood services (play, learning, health, nutrition & protection), improve wellbeing & livelihoods of vulnerable families caring for young children, increase local government budget allocation for ECD agenda & increase school readiness increase enrollment & retention.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
