Hope on Christmas Day
“On Christmas day, 2009, I visited and distributed food to the neediest street children in the slums of Nairobi, I couldn’t bare to walk past these neglected children any longer. I organized a van full of food and personally went out to give them just a little hope on Christmas day. Whilst spending quality time with the boys that had nothing else but the bottle of glue they sniffed to numb the pain of hunger and dull their misery, I discovered that underneath their dirty clothes and sad, beaten eyes was their beautiful strong spirit, each deserving of a better life, if given the chance.
Unable to comprehend the scope of the problem and unable to untangle the complex political and cultural web that created this horror I continued to fill dirty hungry hands with slices of bread. The boys multiplied in front of my eyes. They shared with me their tragic stories that tells a resilience in the face of adversity, then and there I knew that no matter what, I had to do SOMETHING”
What we do
In February 2010 our most ambitious initiative was born, ‘The New Horizons Centre’. The centre offers a rehabilitation program and a stable and safe environment for 31 boys that had been living on the streets of local slums in Nairobi, Kenya. The conditions that they lived in were appalling, unfit for human habitation and completely unacceptable.
Once settled into their new home the boys participated in education and rehabilitation programs since it’s our intention to not only provide a safe place for the boys to live, but to provide them with the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty, to live happy, fulfilling lives and contribute positively to their community.These education and rehabilitation programs are not limited to traditional mediums. The boys are offered one-on one counselling of which spiritual guidance is a high priority and lessons of which are given on a daily basis. They are also encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities such as varied sports. The boys are also take part in relationship building counselling, in particular those boys that still have families, which due to circumstance, are unable to care for them.
The facilities we offer in the centre include two in-house classrooms; counselling room; entertainment/dining room; arts and craft workshop; staff and volunteers office and the children’s sleeping rooms.
As you might imagine, caring for 31 adolescent and pre-adolescent boys is full of challenges that are forever changing but we hope that with continued support we will rise to meet these challenges and forever change the lives of not only these boys but any other that due to circumstances, find themselves living at our centre.
Our mission is to offer neglected and vulnerable children a future, to bring hope back into their lives and give them the chance of becoming the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
What we offer the boys
Shelter
Providing shelter is crucial to our rehabilitation program as our children need to be protected from the harmful street life exposure to successfully change for the better. Our boys that once were malnourished, addicted to drugs and abandoned are now living in a happy, safe and loving environment.
Education
We offer in-house schooling which teaches them basic subjects such as maths, english, science, language, social studies and most recently personal development, thus preparing them for future educational placements. We have qualified teachers who volunteer their time on a weekly basis in dedication to help them reach their fullest potential so they strive to fulfil their dreams and aspirations through education. In such a short period of time we have successfully placed 5 boys in educational institutions through partnering with neighbouring Schools. Our goal is to place each and every child at our centre in school once they are prepared and have been through the first stages of rehabilitation.
Food
We provide daily nutritious meals to keep their energy levels up and their brain super-active, as a result our kids are healthier, happier and better equipped to learn.
Healthcare
Offering healthcare services to the boys is our high priority as most of them had been living on the streets for many years and were exposed to many and varied health risks, including; malnutrition; skin diseases; infections etc. They are given regular medical check-ups and treated immediately if any attention is needed. The centre has partnered with a local health clinic which provides all their medical needs as well as LocalAid’s own clinic which provides free services of testing and counselling for HIV/AIDS, all the boys have been tested and are all negative.
Spiritual Guidance
For these children who have suffered greatly on the streets through neglect, abuse and violence, having God in their lives gives them a sense of identity, importance and belonging. The boys relationship with God has deepened by the spiritual guidance of prayer, teaching and love they have received. They attend church every Sunday, together with participating in biblical studies in our in-house classrooms. This has filled them with hope to summit to their highest ambitions.
Couselling
A component of our rehabilitation program is that each child undergoes one on one counselling sessions to recover from the trauma faced while being on the streets and to slowly change their anti-social or offending behaviour
Vocational Training
The vocational training program was established for the boys to learn and develop skills that will open a door for their future. The program introduces them to small scale business opportunities and managements, such as, teaching them the techniques of how to make detergent products. Once the boys are taught this, together with packaging and labelling process, they are then taken through the sales and marketing procedures. The two-fold benefits of this program are, firstly enabling the boys to be economically secure in the future and secondly by the income generating benefits for the centre. The funds generated through the sale of the products are to support the on-going operational expenses of the centre and a percentage will go towards the boys future college fees.
Recreational Trips
We take them on educational and recreational trips, they get the chance to take a break from the centre and just have fun.
Sports
The boys participate in football so they develop their social and leadership skills.
Why Street Children?
There are close to 60,000 street children in Nairobi alone and over 300,000 in Kenya overall, the number of street children can be attributed to economic depression, wide-spread poverty, natural and human-made disasters and diseases such as AIDS. Orphans who lost their parents to AIDS or natural disasters and runaway children escaping violence or abuse in their homes. Abandoned children also constitute a large percentage of street children in Nairobi. Many are children of single mothers who were once on the street themselves.
Streetboys 4 Streetboys
Streetboys 4 Streetboys is a program the boys from ‘The New Horizon Centre’ themselves wanted to establish in celebration of Christmas day, the day they were saved from the streets. The program is structured in a way that gives the boys a chance to give back to their community. The purpose of the program is to save more children from their harsh street life. Our driven boys went out this Christmas to visit and give out food to children and families on the streets and they will continue to visit these children for a month to strengthen and build their relationship and trust (just as we did with them) before they can offer them a new home at ‘The New Horizon Centre’. This is what we at LocalAid strive to achieve and that’s to reach out and spread love to as many clotheless, barefoot, suffering children as we possibly can, yet at the same time teaching them to appreciate all that they have been blessed with.
