Education Program
By ensuring educational and social assistance, children and their parents have been able to reach beyond obstacles to a hope-filled direction. A better standard of living provides the foundation for their future. The goal of the program is to break the circle of illiteracy, disease, premature death, and poverty which have plagued poor children and their families in Kenya for a long time by providing preventive, creative solutions. With a little help the people of Kenya can enjoy a more stable future where most of its citizens have substantial education, livelihood, and enough resources to set themselves with Advantage One Insurance or similar.
Since 1999 LDK has been involved in the promotion of education of needy children in rural and poor urban areas. From 2000 Learning and Development Kenya has been implementing a literacy project, designed to improve on the literacy and reading skills of the orphans and needy children and prepare them for positive and active participation in nation building.
The feeding program has been part of the project since it started in 2000 and aims at providing a meal every day to children who would otherwise miss a meal and therefore decides to abscond school lessons. The aim of the feeding program is to reduce school drop rate caused by hunger within the homes where the children come from.
HIV/AIDS Program
LDK seeks to encourage and amplify the voices of those struggling for a more and just Kenya. It supports orphans like Caroline Chepkurui, together with her other sister and a brother to obtain quality education. Her story is a typical experience that many children left without parents at an early age and living within our midst go through.
HIV/AIDS program aims to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and promotes sustainable behavior change among the youth and residents. In the past LDK has collaborated with The Ark Foundation of Africa to provide training workshops for the residents as well as support scale up activities by CBOs within East Africa.
LDK also provides monthly HIV/AIDS education to the local community. As an active participant in other community activities, LDK has developed the necessary trust among the people of Nakuru to implement these educational programs. Many families are unwilling to acknowledge that a loved one they lost died of AIDS, very negatively impacting local cultural perspectives. The continuous activities and education carried out by LDK staff—with their understanding of the local culture—has helped break down the debilitating stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.
Micro credit / Economic Empowerment Program
LDK is dedicated to the families of the children in the school, and we offer monthly seminars to parents on business, computers, and health. Our successful microfinance program impacted more than 4,500 families in a single year, and many of those individuals now have the means to generate a sustainable income.
We loan small amounts of seed capital at zero interest to families to start their own business—families who otherwise would never have dreamed that financial independence was a possibility. Because of the relationships we have fostered with the families of the children from the enrolled in the school, LDK is uniquely positioned to identify the most motivated, entrepreneurial individuals as recipients and maintain continuous contact with recipients.
Environmental & Sanitation Program
Background information
Kenya is not on track to meet Millennium Development Goal Seven, which aims to reduce by half the number of people without access to clean drinking water and decent sanitation by 2015. Despite the Kenya government being a signatory to several declarations on improving sanitation, many Kenyan households still lacks access to flush toilets or pit latrines. Open defecation is widespread, and 'flying toilets', where people defecate in plastic bags and throw them away at night are the rule rather than the exception in many informal settlements.
Poor sanitation facilities often lead to ill health. For instance 30 percent of Kenya's disease burden is sanitation-related, with many children dying from diarrhoeal diseases including dysentery, cholera and typhoid, according to the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation. The U.N. says that such deaths could be prevented through investment in toilets, water and hygiene.
Toilet cover in Kenya is still low, with latrines available to less than 50 percent of the population, according the ministry of Public Health and Sanitation. Although Kenya committed itself to increased financing for sanitation at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002 -- promising to reduce the proportion of people without basic sanitation facilities -- the issue has not been prioritized in national budgets since then.
Government statistics show that budgetary allocation to sanitation in Kenya currently stands at 13 million dollars per year, too little for the country to reach the sanitation MDG. It is estimated that the country will require about 40 million dollars per year if it is to achieve the MDG by the set deadline of 2015.
Objectives
· Rebuild the environment through participation in environmental management by planting trees annually.
· Participate in clean up exercises. Where possible, secure Municipal Council contract for cabbage collection to enable income collection from the exercise and enhance program sustainability.
· Facilitate rainwater catchments to store rain water for poor families within our areas of operation. The urban poor communities live in a settlement area with makeshift housing and lack basic physical infrastructure and social amenities, including pipe borne water.
· Consult and facilitate creation of a working network aimed at putting in place environmental policies for an ever clean and green environment with clean air, plenty and clean water for the residents.
· Liaise with the Municipal Council of Nakuru to ensure provision of rubbish bins for the middle class homes to facilitate cabbage collection.
· Advocate for supply of piped water to all the areas within the Municipality.
· Sensitise the population on environmental matters through staff in-house training and seminars, trainings in schools, and workshops in the communities, and by advertisements (by printing LDK T-shirts reflecting its environmental projects).
What we do
· LDK has participated in the annual tree planting exercise. This exercise has had a much bigger / broader impact in the community.
· LDK frequently engages in clean up exercises within the estates with its staff members and the children it supports through the child sponsorship program. This too has a huge impact within the community.
· Follow up with the Municipal council is ongoing.
· LDK has actively participated in environmental seminars and workshops with stakeholders, creating the necessary awareness on environmental matters.
Peace initiative project
LDK is working with the youth in the area to reconcile the affected communities through peace initiatives. Several teams of idle youth have been organized for soccer games. This is the first step towards building a peace team as we consider sports to consist of healing power. The teams consist of youth from different ethnic backgrounds that were affected after the announcement of the flawed presidential elections.
With support from friends and colleagues we plan to get a permanent soccer pitch for the groups. This will also be used by athletic teams of both men and women from all affected ethnic groups. We are hopeful that the power of sports will transcend the created and existing difference among the communities and help bring about peace in this area that we operate in. Your support is vital and will ensure that this peace initiative is sustained.
Relief activities:
During the post-election violence period in January and February 2008, Learning and Development Kenya hosted 826 families (an average of 6,608 people) for three weeks at its center and networked with Kenya Red Cross to ensure supply of food for the displaced families while they were being hosted.
Civic education program
Through civic education, LDK advocates for human rights for children, young people, women and underprivileged. It promotes human rights as well as supports the healing and reconciliation process, building a peaceful and coexistence Kenya where children and young people enjoy their rights as stipulated in the UN convention for the right of the child.
