"Silent Food Crisis Crippling Kenya Slum"

This article published yesterday by Voice of America points out the toll that skyrocketing food prices have taken on the residents of Kibera. The need for aid and opportunities to help are greater now than ever.

As international headlines draw attention to the political bickering among Kenya's leaders, a crisis almost entirely hidden from view is ravaging Nairobi's Kibera slum. A window into the lives of Kibera's schoolchildren reveals how the silent food crisis in Africa's largest slum is threatening an impoverished generation's future.

On the edge of Nairobi sits the sprawling tin-shack Kibera slum, which with its roughly one million inhabitants is large enough to be a city in itself.

Food prices have more than doubled in the past year, making the always-difficult survival of Kibera's population more challenging.

Plight of children

For a generation of Kibera children growing up with extreme urban poverty, disease, and ethnic violence, the unmanageable price of food is causing much wider and more sinister ripples than simply whether or not they will go to bed hungry. When families cannot afford meals here, it is often the children whose lives change most drastically.

"I am going to go home," said Gideon. "Then if there is no food, then I am going to rubbish."

Gideon dropped out of school last year so he could help support his family by scrounging for scraps in the heaping junk piles of Kibera. If he is lucky, he might make 20 cents a day. Gideon is 13-years old.

The school Gideon used to attend is supported by the World Food Program. Usually the lunch meal the school offers is enough to keep kids attending, as it is likely to be their only meal of the day. But in Gideon's case a fatherless home with younger siblings that need feeding and a mother in the late stages of AIDS has all proven too heavy a burden.

Gideon's mother, who is too sick to work and has been unable to persuade her son to return to school, says she makes her other children continue going to school, even though she can not pay the school fees - otherwise her children would not eat. When the kids are kicked out for being unable to pay, she is nevertheless forced to send them back to the school.

Miriam Wawira is the headmistress at a pre-primary school in Kibera. She says those children whose situations are unfortunate enough to qualify them for admittance into the small school are the fortunate ones in their families. While those young kids receive at least two meals a day during the school week, their siblings are unlikely to be as lucky.

"There are those parents who bring their children here simply because they know in as much as there is no food at home, at least this child can come to school, have porridge at 10 o'clock, have lunch at 1 pm," said Wawira. "And then after that, when they go home, even if there is some little food at home, these children who have been to this school, they will always be the last to be served in their family because there are other children who have been in the house and maybe they have not had lunch or did not have breakfast."

Prices skyrocketed

Food prices in Kenya have shot up, in part due to a severe drought that has left the year's harvest well below the nation's basic demand. Maize flour, the basic staple, has more than doubled in the past year, a trend that holds true for about all other simple grocery items.

For families already engaged in a daily struggle to make ends meet, the unbearable food strain could hardly have come at a more inopportune time.

According to a joint report from humanitarian groups Concern Worldwide, Care International, and Oxfam International, the cost of cooking fuel is up by as much as 50 percent from last year, while the price of water has doubled. Meanwhile, the global economic downturn has helped shrink incomes in Kibera by 20 percent.

Steven Okello, a project officer based in Kibera for CARE-Kenya, explains the crisis has remained largely under the radar because the problem is not that there is no food, rather, the prices are simply too steep.

"The food is available, that is the paradox," he said. "The food is available, but the prices are unaffordable for people living in Kibera. Right now if you look at maize flour for instance, one packet goes for 100 shillings. Yet a majority of people living in Kibera live on less than 70 shillings per day."

Read the rest of the article here.

Handbag and Jewelry Sale!

Where: Vincentown United Methodist Church, 97 Main Street, Southampton, New Jersey
When: Saturday August 1, 2009 from 9 am to 12 pm


All the proceeds will provide financial compensation, medicine, hospital care and income opportunities for HIV positive men and women in Kibera.

See the flyer for the event here.

If you are not able to attend but would like to hold a support group sale event in your town, please contact us!

Report from Counselors

The counselors that we have hired to work with the kids at Tunza have written a report for us about what type of issues they have been working on, the progress they have made with the kids and what still needs to be done.

See the full report here.

Uweza on Twitter

Uweza has hopped on the bandwagon and joined Twitter.

Follow us here: www.twitter.com/uwezakenya.

Support groups

The HIV-positive support groups that we support have been busy making bags and beaded jewelry. We have been helping the groups purchase the materials and thanks to the help of volunteers who have generously carried the products in their luggage, we have been selling the goods here. The majority of the proceeds from the sales go directly to the women who make the items, with the rest going into a fund provides hospital care and medicine for support group patients in need.



They have expressed a tremendous amount of gratitude to our supporters who have purchased the goods - the profits have helped them pay school fees for their children, pay their rents and purchase food. We also hope to use some of the funds to provide the groups with materials such as sewing machines or cleaning supplies so that they can start their own small businesses. More pictures of the group as well as their goods have been posted in the Tumaini section of the photo gallery. Please contact us if you are interested in purchasing or selling any of these items!

New Uweza Girls Team!

Two weeks ago, our new Uweza Girls Teams held their first practice! We have been introduced to a very talented female soccer player who has coaching experience and expressed interest in coaching a girls team. As of now, the two teams consists of girls from Tunza Children's Center. The girls are really excited about playing and had so much fun at their first few practices. Once we solidify a roster, we will work on getting them shoes, socks, uniforms and supplies like we did for our boys teams. More pictures of the girls at their practice have been posted in the photo section!

Boys Soccer

We now have five boys teams practicing regularly at a field that we have rented for Uweza teams only on Fridays and Saturdays and four coaches. The teams have been participating in a lot more tournaments and matches. Last weekend, the Tunza Under-12 team earned their first victory, beating out their opponents 1-0 and ending up fourth in the tournament! The Tunza Under-16 team is also currently participating in a tournament.

Changes for Tunza?

Right now is a pretty exciting time at Tunza. A volunteer named Mark, who is from Australia, visited Kibera and Tunza last month and took notice of its need for more structure and organization as well as regular funding. He is currently taking great efforts to set up and maintain a board of directors that will run the center. The board, which includes Dan - who is representing Uweza - has been meeting every week to discuss issues at the center and how donor funds should be spent. Mark is also working on bringing all former and current donors together to pool funds so that Tunza will have a more steady source of income.

He has a lot of great ideas for the center and we are currently carrying out discussions with the board of directors, Faces of Kibera and Mark to figure out the best way forward. This will be really great for the center as it has been living month-to-month for some time now and the added structure will greatly benefit the center and all of the kids. He's working on a website and we will be keeping everyone updated!

Letters

We received several letters from students that we sponsor and they are super cute so we wanted to share some of them. These three are from students that we sponsor through our collective sponsorship fund but who do not yet have an individual sponsor.

Alice, age 13
Duncan, age 14
Oscar, age 13

Coach's Update

Here is an update from one of our soccer coaches:

We had two friendly matches on Tuesday this week, one for our Under-10 team playing against the Under-12 Excel Academy team but we lost 3 - 1. Second was our Under-14 team playing against the Under-14 Excel Academy team but we also lost 3-0. The boys really tried and they enjoyed it despite their loss. Its hard for our boys to start winning the matches because they are actually playing against teams that normally train every day and somehow they are a bit older than them. But all in all we will keep on with the same spirit.