Kijiji Cha Upendo, the story of how
one grassroots organization responded to the devastation of the global AIDS pandemic.
The East coast of Africa.
Kibera, Kenya.
The eye of the storm in the global AIDS pandemic.
It began in the 1980s, a global pandemic killing tens of millions.
The infectious disease HIV/AIDS hit the young, aged 18 to 45 hard; those building lives,
launching careers, continuing education or starting families.
When they died, their children were left orphaned.
AIDS crisis in Kenya has contributed to a large number of orphans in the country.
We have over 1.5 million orphaned children.
Children lose their inheritance when their parents die.
Some children become the heads of households because their parents are ailing.
They are not able to work, and especially girls drop from school to work and support
their families.
As a result, children lack care.
They lack protection, they lack support.
Eventually, they engage in crime, early teenage pregnancies and marriages and eventually going
to the streets again.
The outbreak was global, but the impact was local.
How does a community respond to 20,000 orphans on the street?
In Kibera, groups began to act and a grassroots movement emerged.
One such organization was Kijiji Cha Upendo.
Here, we were actually out to help the orphan, the vulnerable children.
We thought of providing school fees, but we realized that supporting and giving school
fees only was not going to be of much help.
No adequate water, no adequate electricity supply.
Poverty rates are very high.
HIV and AIDS, orphanhood, crime and employment.
It is a place that people really need to come together to address specific needs.
The core message of Kijiji is to meet the needs of our community that is in dire
need of support for they do not have social amenities.
They do not have the basic things that human beings need.
These vulnerable children face a series of complex challenges that need a series of
complex solutions.
Kijiji Cha Upendo expanded their support to be family-based rather than focus only on
the children.
We decided that the families that actually live with the orphans need to be supported
in terms of being given money, so as to be able to give basic needs.
We thought of one, we do not have enough funds.
Secondly, we'll be creating dependency, so we decided that we'd give work so that we
create confidence in them and give them self-esteem, not dependence, but that when the kids go
back home, that is they have something to eat.
They have a place to sleep.
They have a pencil, they have uniform.
Our key mission is to empower families who are affected by HIV and AIDS, to provide
support to orphans in loving family homes.
We envision a society where orphaned children will grow up into responsible citizens.
Kijiji Cha Upendo objective is to support families in need of social support for they
lost their parents, they lost love, guidance, inheritance.
With such an important mission, how could could Kijiji Cha Upendo begin to address
the need for sustainable change in the community?
Their focus turned to the women caregivers, giving them the tools to enhance their entrepreneurial
skills.
Empowering women is very important to the success of this project.
It's a project that empowers families living with orphans, and it's contributing to the
socioeconomic aspects of the community.
In terms of women having businesses, they contribute to the economic aspect of the community.
For a long time, women have been discriminated on.
They are voiceless.
They cannot make decisions for their life, their health, economic status, but when you
have your own resources, then you have a voice.
So by empowering women in this project, we are giving children a voice.
More than this, health issues of HIV/AIDS and nutrition are addressed.
Kijiji organized community meetings for the women.
Community development is a key focus for Kijiji Cha Upendo.
Then we also do the wider community meetings where we not only have our own members
but also have the other community to tell them about HIV and AIDS, to encourage them
to take drugs, to encourage to report gender-based violence like rape and such.
We have the revolving fund, community education fortnightly meetings, the home and school
visits.
Those are some of the components we have in our project.
Finally, Kijiji supplements school fees and bolsters the orphan caregivers' efforts
to keep all their children in school.
The core of Kijiji Cha Upendo remains focused on the vulnerable children left homeless by
the HIV/AIDS crisis in providing them with a caring, loving home life where they can
thrive.
Kijiji Cha Upendo has a policy that the family they're going to support must have
lived with the children for more than three years.
That is important because of love.
These people must have demonstrated that they love these children and that love is a key
thing for children to grow up in a manner that they can end up being responsible citizens.
The grassroots organization assisted financially from overseas funders such as
Village of Love Canada and CAP Network continues to grow and the Kijiji Cha Upendo message
has spread widely through the community.
Since inception, we started in 2010, November.
When it started, we 15 families, 75 children, but now we have 75 families, 400 children.
Kijiji Cha Upendo is a powerful combination of fundraising, community development, and
upskilling female entrepreneurs to create long-term sustainable change in the community
of Kibera and empowered vulnerable children to stay in school.