Virtues and Community Development for Kenya

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your generosity and support for the Virtues and Community Development initiative in Kenya. With your support, we continue to transform our communities into safe, caring, compassionate and capacity -building spaces for the adults and children as well. 

Watoto Watunzwe Programme (WWP)

In order to safeguard students in their homes, we have created a program based on The Virtues Project Strategies,  Watoto Watunzwe(Protecting Children)  Programme, an initiative aimed at educating parents and guardians on child protection policies, fostering open and inclusive communication between adults and children, supporting mental well-being, and encouraging involvement of children in decision-making for their holistic development.

Watoto Watunzwe Programme (WWP) is a child safety and safeguarding programme. The programme targets learners aged 6 – 14 years in 241 schools who will benefit from child protection initiatives, as well as, public participation through art in education (Music, Drawing, Painting, Drama and Skits).

The ultimate goal of WWP is to build the capacity to facilitate attitude and behavior change among all the targeted population in safeguarding and protection of children at home, in the community, in learning institutions, and in the church. The objectives also seek to equip the beneficiaries with appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes to effectively play their roles in safeguarding and protection of children.

WWP provides a platform for mobilized community groups in schools which stand to benefit from training on The Virtues Project Strategies.

This is an opportunity for our Facilitators to blend The Virtues Project strategies with WWP’s creating a powerfully  trained stakeholder database. 

 Livelihoods Response to the Vulnerable

In order to provide equal quality education, your support and the contributions from our farming capacity building initiatives continue to provide support to parents, guardians, community members  and educators in accessing training for alternative income generating initiatives and emotional and mental well-being support groups. These initiatives allow these guardians to effectively provide school fees and food for the children and foster peaceful, compassionate relationships with the children they care for or interact with. These initiatives have brought together guardians, educators and community members to provide schools fees and meals for underprivileged children in their communities using proceeds from the capacity building initiatives.

Thank you for your continous support and generosity.

Links:

• The Virtues Project Website
• Virtues in Kenya Blogpost

It’s my pleasure to write to you as the public communication officer of The Virtues Project in Kakamega and elsewhere.  Among the successful projects this year includes how a Virtues Community helped a family solve their own problem.

A warring couple was having many scuffles that led them to injuring each other.  The police prepared the forms to take them to court whereby both of them were ready for a divorce.  Fortunately, an officer who had been trained in Virtues advised the woman to visit the Gender Based Violence Child Protection and Promotion Desk.  There she met Bibiana Andabwa, the program coordinator who guides and counsels cases using the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project.  The couple was re-united after undergoing virtues training and cards pick and reflecting on the same.  The couple had a beautiful wedding in the church. 

Their daughter was the cause of the conflict.  Her mother wanted her to pursue her education, while the father wanted her to get married due to lack of funds.  A virtues trained team worked out ways to get a loan.  A member of that team, a young parent who had stopped drinking and turned his life around after virtues training, helped her to apply for the loan.  She is now second year in the university.

This successful outcome happened because of changes that Mama Bibiana and The Virtues Project have brought to the community.  The police department had virtues training.  A team of virtues trained people was able to uncover a solution for the family.  The young alcoholic parent had virtues training.  And the couple was able to communicate with each other once again because they had virtues training.  The result was a beautiful wedding in the church with Mama Bibiana as the Best Lady.

Under Mama Bibiana’s vision and leadership, Virtues and Community Development for Kenya is expanding our efforts beyond Kakamega County into three more counties.  In each county, group members are trained to support bringing virtues clubs into both primary and secondary schools.  Teachers will be trained to help monitor integrity in the clubs and in classrooms. 

To extend the program into the community, parents will also be trained. Some parents will be identified as trainers at a community level so they can help spread virtues into families, villages, communities and schools.  Training will be available on the internet and in person.

Virtues and Community Development for Kenya intends to travel to at least two schools in every county every month for virtues training programs and economic empowerment projects. One visit to a single county will cost $200-250. 

We thank you for your continuing support of families and communities in western Kenya and for any ways you can help to also make this new program happen.

Since the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, the Kenyan government put in place a lot of restrictions on gatherings. These restrictions combined with the fact that this has been an election year for Kenya, have made it extremely difficult to effectively carry out many community activities including training. Despite this difficulty, we are thankful for the peacefulness that followed the general elections as we usher in this new government.

With Covid-19 restrictions came frequent school closures leading to an increase in cases of indiscipline in schools. This has resulted in an increase in attachment at the Kakamega Police Station Children Protection Unit and All Angels Lutonyi Catholic Church Gender Violence / Child Protection and Promotion Desk. We have attended to many cases affecting school children and adults in the community and within schools: truancy, early marriages/ pregnancy, sodomy, lesbianism, single parent challenges, divorce, separation, children sired from adultery, irresponsible parenting, child neglect, child abandonment, violence against children, and drugs just to mention afew. 

Several of these cases are referred to us from different schools and communities due to the successful transformative experiences we have had using The Virtues Project’s Five Strategies and Virtues Picks. By holding conversations about our work with The Virtues Project, communities and schools are able to reach us and access information on alternative ways to resolve indiscipline, violence and many more social issues using the Five Strategies by The Virtues Project.

 GENDER BASED VIOLENCE / CHILD PROTECTION AND PROMOTION DESK.

 Some of the family related cases we receive and attend to can be very traumatizing and I have learnt to rely not only on The Virtues Project’s Five Strategies but also prayer for wisdom and direction. An example of such cases are as below;

1.  In one family, the husband caught the wife in bed with their groundsman.  He was infuriated and wanted to harm them both but a neighbor directed them to our GBV/Child Protection and Promotion Office where we met and spoke. After listening to him, we requested that he come back with his wife. We then commenced a fortnight worth of counseling sessions using the Five Strategies to resolve this dispute. Thankfully, they are now reconciled as a couple and have since dismissed the groundsman. 
2. A 35 year old mother was sent away from their family home because she had given birth to two children with disabilities. She then planned to kill the children and later commit suicide. After many counseling sessions where we told her about the Five Strategies and how to apply Virtues to her daily life, she decided to continue living. We have since contacted  the Association of Persons with Disability who have offered  to support one of the children. We will also be supporting her using interest from our Table Banking  project. 

PLANTING OF INDIGENOUS  FOOD AND VEGETABLES.

Our attempt at planting indigenous  food and vegetables was disrupted by the heavy rains this year. We will be making another attempt at planting during the upcoming short rains season with the hope of harvesting, selling and using the funds to continue to inspire the practice of virtues in communities, build character in our children and empower the Virtues training beneficiaries involved in the project. 

 VIRTUES CARDS SWAHILI TRANSLATION

Your donations have enabled the translation of The Virtues Cards into Swahili. This will greatly improve usability with non-English speaking people in this region.

Your donations continue to help us inspire the practice of virtues in different walks of life and empower our beneficiaries with the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project to ease the practice of Virtues and live by their highest value.

Links:

• The Virtues Project Website
• VPIA Partner Virtues Cards App
• VPIA Partner bringing character and virtue to business culture

Virtues training resumed on May 21, with the virtues pick, Righteousness!  Since we have a venue for our trainings, we have focused a lot of energy into community-based virtues trainings.  Twenty-eight people were in attendance at our May training including teachers, post-secondary school teenagers, parents, virtues facilitators, clergy, business and civil service members. Success stories were shared by teachers, law enforcement, and community development group members.

In addition to virtues training, community development group members will receive training in table banking, farming indigenous crops and raising poultry.  We provide the initial seedlings and poultry.  Recently we resorted to rearing ducks, instead of chickens, because chickens were proving to be too costly due to their suceptibility to sickness and the cost of vaccines.   

We  are in discussions with school officials on how to bring virtues training into the school curriculum.  We have been referred to Nairobi for further dscussions on our way forward..  

We are are also in discussions to bring virtues training for police officers as part of the Kigano College police training program.  The vision is that officers would graduate with a Virtues Certificate to help them reduce corruption cases in the country and promote integrity.  

We have been able to translate virtues cards from English to Swahili.  We hope to raise funds from the sale of these cards to support  The Virtues Project training  that we provide with the support of the Virtues Project International Association.

We thank you for your ongoing financial support and encouragement.  

Links:

• The Virtues Project Website
• VPIA Partner Virtues Cards App
• VPIA Partner bringing character and virtue to business culture

We are facing many challenges.  Unfortunately, we attend many funerals these days--funerals for friends, family members, and community members due to Covid and other health issues. One volunteer lost his mother. Our team has faced its own health challenges, including hospitalizations for Covid and Malaria, but we are all eager to continue our work.  We are calling on our virtue of Fortitude.

With great care, our community development work is resuming.  We have now purchased a banner, tent, and chairs to be able to offer workshops and training outside.  This way we don't interrupt work inside of classrooms and workplaces, and we create a safer environment for learning during a pandemic.  We are very happy that our tent and banner display The Virtues Project logo. Our banner and tent are used for group training, activities, and projects with our partner organizations and participants.  We have been successful in holding virtues training. 

We thank you, our donors, and VPIA for your words of encouragement, generosity, and commitment to help us spread the program to people who have been waiting for an opportunity to learn.  We are very grateful for your support.