Every other Monday, 12-year-old Jered joins his friends at the library after school. They meet for a joint mentor session with Coach Brian. Jered loves talking about football with his friends. He never thought about how he could apply what he learned on the pitch to the rest of his life. Like on the pitch, he’s responsible for protecting the goal, if he neglects his post the team will lose the game. In life he has responsibilities too and if he neglects them, he will lose out.
This question was our starting point as we talked about our vision for the kids we work with in Kibera. We had gathered the team at our School Transition Programme who prepare children to return to school.
We talked about wanting our children to be healthy and happy, to be confident, to be kind to others and have friends. We talked about our dreams for them to go to university and get degrees and good jobs. Maybe you have similar dreams for the children in your life.
Just as we have dreams for our own children, our father God has dreams for each of us. He has dreams for each of the children who come to our centres in Kibera every day.
Like Joash*, who is eleven years old and lives with his mum in Kibera. Joash dropped out of school 4 years ago because his mum could not get the money together to enrol him. For four years, he’s been out of education, he is so far behind his classmates but he is also so eager to learn.
We talked with our team of teachers, cooks and social workers about our mission to demonstrate God’s love to vulnerable children in Kibera. As we work with Joash to get him ready to return to school, we show God’s love and point him to the hope that God holds out to him.
So when Mary, our cook, wakes early to prepare breakfast for 25 kids. It might look like she’s just cooking another meal but actually she is taking part in God’s great work in Joash’s life.
(Pictured above: Kids in our School Transition Programme showing off their new pencil cases)
*We have changed the name to protect the child’s identity
Three strangers who became friends and now partners in serving women and youth in Kibera. Here’s the story of Masungula Krafts Foundation…
Janet started a business selling crafts in local markets, she worked with different tailors to make the products and had a dream to empower women and youth from Kibera with art and design skills. Monica set up a tailoring school in Langata, an area that borders Kibera. She has a heart to share her skills and was looking for students to teach. Turning Point’s vision is to see not just children, but the whole family, achieving their potential. We were searching for more opportunities to empower the parents of the children we serve.
I have been cooking lunch for the children from my local mosque. When they finish madrasa they line up outside my house. I give from my own pocket although it is not enough. – Duboi, resident of Kibra
‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’. Jeremiah 29:11
This was one of the memory verses earnestly recited to us by the children at the transition school in Kibera. It is hard to imagine “hope’ and “a future”, when faced with the reality of what life is like for so many children who attend the Foundations of Hope and Transition schools.
“Welcome, welcome! Please have a seat!” the mother excitedly greeted us as we squeezed through her half-open doorway. If we had opened it any further, it would have fallen off its hinges. I squashed onto a seat next to social worker Margaret, our knees touching the bed in front of us.
Once a year, Margaret and Daniel, our social workers, visit the home of every child in our programmes to conduct a home study. It is a chance to catch up on how the family are doing and see first-hand their home situation. Last week I joined them as they went house to house in Laini Saba.
You may well have seen the words ‘Back to School’ a lot recently as kids prepared for another year of reading, writing and arithmetic. New uniforms, new shoes, the all-important new pencil case! Well Globalgiving are giving us an opportunity to help send some more kids back to school this September. From the 24th to 28th of September they are running a campaign to match your first donation when you start a monthly donation to Turning Point through GlobalGiving.
The new year is always exciting for us at the transition school, we not only welcome new kids to the project but we also celebrate as the kids we had transition to formal primary education.
This year 27 kids out of the 30 chidren have successfully transitioned and Maria is among them. When you meet Maria along the corridors of her new school, Fountain of Hope Primary school, she exudes a gentle confidence. She’s calm yet has blended in with the rest despite her being the new kid in Class 5.
Caro is the prefect for Class 5 at the Fountains of Hope primary school. This twelve-year-old entertains no nonsense and her peers call her ‘the governor’. Caro is the youngest of four siblings who lost their parents when Caro was very young. They came to live in Kibera with an aunt who already had three children of her own. Her own children suffer with a skin condition that requires frequent treatment and she herself is diabetic. Caro’s aunt is a hero, caring as best she can for seven children in their tiny home in Kibera.
16-year-old Harrison* is the first born of five. Much of his childhood was spent on the Kenyan coast in Mombasa until his father died. His mother sought the help of their grandfather who lives in Kibera and now the five children live in Kibera with their grandad while their mother returned to Mombasa.
When our social workers visited their one-roomed home they found two beds covered in clothes as make-shift mattresses. There was little else in the room – no furniture, no cooking stove. The grandfather would buy food from small cafes and kiosks in the slum as they had nowhere to cook at home.
