Kathryn Becher

On Feb 27th, I set off for Tanzania with an organisation called the Kilimanjaro Initiative (KI), and what followed turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life. Our group consisted of 31 people, 10 of whom were young people and youth leaders from the slums of Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Brazil. As a collective we represented 14 countries, all coming together to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, and to encourage young people to have self-belief and to provide opportunities that will enable them to take on a constructive role in their communities. Recognizing that 2010 is an important year for sports, with the World Cup coming to the African continent for the first time, the goal of the KI climb this year was to highlight the importance of sport as a tool for development.

At Horombo hut, with Kili covered in snow in the background

I had wanted to climb Kilimanjaro for many years, but this project gave me the incentive to get on with it, as it provided me with the opportunity to contribute to a project that is so compatible with my work for AfCiC, and it enabled me to shadow and learn from an amazing team of outward bound instructors to learn more about their methods and motivations.  My intention is to bring the outward bound ideas and techniques into AfCiC to contribute to our work with vulnerable young people, so watch this space for more on that…

We set out last Monday, and by 11pm on Wednesday evening (after about an hour or two of sleep!) we were beginning the final ascent to the first summit, Gillman’s Point. It was a time of soul searching and a heck of a lot of willpower for everyone in the group, as the high altitude and exhaustion began to take their toll on our long line of hikers and guides as we wound our way in a zig zag formation up the mountain, the way ahead fortuitously illuminated by the full moon. Gritty determination showed on everyone’s face, and gradually a few of the group dropped back, their pace reducing to an agonising slow motion, as a result of exhaustion, or the nausea, shortness of breath and disorientation that high altitude can trigger. Thankfully, with the support of an expert team of local guides and the encouragement of each other (as our disparate group had well and truly developed into a team by this point), the group continued upwards, and ultimately, 28 of the 31 reached Gillman’s point. From Gillman’s we got to watch the sunrise over a lower peak of Kilimanjaro, Mawenzi, and from their 14 of us made our way on to the final summit and the highest point of the mountain, Uhuru Peak, standing at 5895 metres!

At the summit! - Uhuru Peak

It’s hard to find the words to describe what we saw at the top of Kili as it was so stunningly beautiful. That day the light seemed perfect, and sunglasses were vital to prevent snow blindness as we were surrounded by thick snow and ice, with glaciers reaching up through the clouds. With the changing climate and global warming, it won’t be long before the snow is gone from the summit, so I am hugely grateful to have experienced it now.

The roof of Africa

We spent the next two days descending through the foothills of Kilimanjaro National Park and then returned to our hotel on the Friday night. Everyone was tired but so happy to have achieved so much. The weekend that followed was a chance to relax and reflect on our experiences, before we all separated on Sunday evening, and it was very apparent that the youth involved were taking away a lot of enthusiasm for the future and a much greater faith in what we are capable of, as were the rest of us. It was very inspiring to see what can be possible when people are pushed to their physical limits, and also extremely comforting to see the way in which an effective team can develop out of a group of total strangers.

The whole team pointing to Uhuru!

Now, I’m off to Tanzania for a week to climb Kilimanjaro, so I’ll be back with more blog entries after that! Im going with a group from the Kilimanjaro Initiative, including about 15 youth from the Kibera slums, and I’m so excited to see what will happen. I’m hoping to bring all that I learn about outward bound youth work back to AfCiC to share with our staff and children. Wish me luck!

It has been a big week at our Interim Care Centre for former street children, as after a long wait during which time we have been sorting out several children from the previous cohort for whom it has been very difficult to find suitable schools, 17 new boys arrived on Wednesday. There are about 8 more to come from an area on the outskirts of Thika, Makongeni, but they will come early next week. Wednesday morning was street recruitment in Thika Town itself, which meant a small group of us assembling in the middle of town at 6.30am (accompanied by Matt Oldfield, a photographer visiting us for a week on behalf of the Vodafone Foundation to help capture our work in action. Photos will be coming soon I hope!) and spreading out to find and talk to as many of the street children as possible. We picked an early time as we wanted to identify those who sleep on the street, rather than ‘day street children’ who have a place to sleep, albeit usually very basic, but who work or beg on the street during the day in the search of money and/or food. The two groups are both extremely vulnerable, but for the ICC, we focus on children whose entire life is conducted on the street, which makes them the more consistently vulnerable group. We tracked down 9 children, who our staff have been talking with for the past few months in preparation for recruitment, and had long conversations with many more, fortunately while they were still conherent, pre-glue sniffing. 
 
We then jumped on a bus and went to Ruiru, a town about 20 minutes from Thika where there is a large number of street children, and so began the second stage of recruitment. This time it was easier as AfCiC’s outreach staff had already identified the children during their weekly outreach workshops in Ruiru, so it was a matter of rounding them up, with the aid of a football and an acrobatics instructor(!), double-checking they still wanted to come to ICC, and unlike with the Thika children, for whom we still have to find out about their backgrounds, getting parental consent from a few of their parents who are around but currently incapable of supporting their child/ren.

So, by late Wednesday afternoon we had 17 new boys, and the ICC compound was covered in boys asleep on the grass, as most of them had probably not rested properly, i.e. without fear or hunger disturbing their sleep, in a very long time. After washing and re-dressing in more decent clothing, they each were allocated a bed and a blanket, and finally (they were very impatient understandably!) we all ate together. After introductions and a few ground rules, it was bedtime, and I was glad to know that 17 more children than usual had a safe place to sleep that night… soon to be 25… and so the aim is that, with a lot of hard work and commitment, 25 children would be back in school by the end of this year, and able to plan their future rather than the endless struggle for daily survival, and if possible, their families will be in a more stable position, through microfinance loans and skills training.

On Sunday I visited a primary boarding school just outside Thika, where five of our children are now studying, and it was such an inspiring day! I travelled out there with one of our social workers and some family members of the children, and aside from being happy to see the them again, we were all thrilled at how well they are doing academically and socially. Their grades are excellent and they have already made a lot of friends, which is the best that you can hope for when a child leaves our care and returns to their own life, on their own terms.

Negative stereotypes surround street children here in Kenya, and while we at AfCiC see that a child living on the street has as much potential for intelligence, wit, creativity, ambition, compassion, fun and a bright future as any other child, many people choose to assume that the scruffy exterior indicates a lack of all those things. Our experience has taught us that when a child who has lived on the street is given the chance to resume education, in whatever form, and to have a stable home, they can often outshine their peers. They have such a hunger to learn, to achieve their ambitions and to move away from the suffering in their past, and they have learnt to survive in the face of all kinds of challenges, which more often than not gives them the persistence and creativity that will be crucial when they come to look for work once they complete their education.

A major part of my role here at AfCiC is to support the staff and Director to develop local fundraising efforts and to raise community awareness of what we do and why. Of course I am continuing to write proposals, network and look for supporters for AfCiC all over the world, but we also believe strongly that local fundraising is a must for a small charity like AfCiC – Firstly, it doubles up as advocacy, and increases the average Thika community member’s awareness of the issues faced by street and other acutely vulnerable children and their families, and of the strategies employed by AfCiC to find solutions to these issues. Secondly, we want to develop a sustainable charity that can grow on its own terms, deeply rooted in the local community and in Kenya, which after all is where the beneficiaries are from, and where the solutions to their problems are to be found. Thirdly, we want to be sure that as and when I leave the charity, there is a vibrant culture of fundraising in AfCiC, that does not rely on one or two people’s efforts. This goal also ties in closely with our long term push to develop appropriate and complementary income generating activities for AfCiC, which can also be sustained locally, avoiding a total reliance on external aid.

In Thika, we have a monthly collection of food donations at a big local supermarket, and every member of AfCiC staff, our volunteers and a few eager young people work shifts for 8 hours to engage with shoppers, talk about AfCiC’s work, and encourage people to add an extra item to their shopping list that day and give it to us! The responses vary, of course, but we receive a lot of donations of food, toiletries, cash, and other offers of help, and best of all, our visibility in the community increases, which helps with our ongoing efforts to combat the negative stereotypes of street children that are so common here in Kenya. Last weekend’s collection alone brought several requests to volunteer with us and to help with our fundraising, as well as all the material donations, so we’re following up on these exciting prospects as I type this.

Another example of our local fundraising is our collection tin appeal, which was originally started to engage all of our staff in a very hands on form of fundraising, which doesn’t take up too much time, which gets the AfCiC name out in the community, and which gives all the staff a feeling of being a part of AfCiC’s growth. Every staff member has a tin and it’s up to them to find a good location, monitor its progress and bring it in when it’s full. It’s a simple idea, and certainly not a new idea, but for a small charity in Thika, it’s unique, and the 25 tins that we currently have out in the community are bringing in some much needed shillings!

With Nairobi just an hour away from Thika, I’ve also been there a lot lately to drum up support for AfCiC among Kenyan businesses and individuals. Several plans are currently hatching to mobilize these contacts, including a concert and cocktail evening later this year at a new and exclusive Nairobi hotel, so watch this space for more details…!

Aside from continuing to battle a 7 week long chest infection (better now!), January was a very productive month for me and AfCiC. I had a plenty of time to get stuck into some serious funding research, especially thanks to a very handy donation of a year’s subscription to the Directory of Social Change’s excellent Trustfunding website. (If you’re looking for trust funding and you need help with your research, I’d highly recommend buying it! – http://www.trustfunding.org.uk/ )

We had a visitor with us for a few days in January from Sweden, whose Trust has agreed to donate a chunk of unrestricted funding to AfCiC. As always, I love to host visitors and show them around Thika and our projects, so it was a pleasure having him with us. The arrival of the funding was also a very welcome start to the year, and the Trust are now kindly sharing many of their links and contacts with us to help in the pursuit of further funding, both internationally and in Sweden.

I was also able to visit a number of local NGOs to explore some partnership opportunities, which I love doing as there are some amazing projects going on in Kenya! I particularly enjoyed visiting Alive and Kicking Kenya (a very relevant charity in the year of the World Cup and the Africa Cup of Nations. Check them out here - http://bit.ly/c9SuAg ) who ‘manufacture hand stitched footballs, netballs, and volleyballs in sub-Saharan Africa to provide balls for children who don’t have balls to play with, create jobs for previously unemployed adults, and promote health education for young people’.  They have agreed to come and organise some football activities with our children in April, which should be both fun and educational, as through their activities they use football to educate about HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB and other critical health issues. They will also be donating some of their hand-stitched footballs to us and some local schools, which I know is going to be very popular with all the children in the area!

The redesign of our website continues to be a hot topic. Over Christmas and New Year, I assembled an email focus group to get feedback on our current website and to make suggestions on how to develop a new one. I got lots of responses which have really helped us to understand the direction that we need to move in, so now we’re busy collecting photos that best reflect who we are, and rethinking the content and style to be sure that we can better connect and engage with our supporters, and more importantly, attract new ones! It’s a real learning curve for me and our staff, but our website designers, NairoBits (http://www.nairobits.com/), have been very supportive, and now that the contract is signed, it’s all systems go. We choose the designers as aside from being very talented and a really nice group of people, their ethos is also a great match with ours, as their objective is ‘to change lives of children and youths by empowering them with creative and innovative ICT skills’, aiming their training and support at youth from non-formal settlements in Nairobi.  I’m looking forward to keeping you updated on our progress and I can’t wait to get it up and running! We’ve set June as our rough deadline, so watch this space… and in the meantime, any tips regarding the process of redesigning charity websites would be gratefully received!

An essential part of running club training - how to tie shoelaces effectively!

The Interim Care Centre (ICC) Running Club was sadly (well, sadly for me at least!)put on hold during January as we had so few children in the Centre as we are between cohorts. Meanwhile I’ve been keeping up my running training (feeling a bit lonely though without 25 children and my colleague, Edward, with an unnecessarily loud whistle running alongside me!) and frequenting the local Thika gym’s circuit training classes, to be sure that I’m fit and ready for the next Running Club group!  

Most of the last ICC cohort have now left for school and home, which is always an inspiring process to experience, and now, before a new group join us, our Centre staff take the opportunity to evaluate their work over the past 6-9 months, follow up on previous residents at school and home, locate schools for the few remaining children, prepare curriculum materials and facilities for the next cohort, and take a well-earned breather while they have the chance!

As the title gives away, this is a belated post, as I’ve just been introduced to the world of World of Difference blogging. (Thanks again to Dan B at Vodafone for all his support!) But as so much has happened over the past couple of months, I don’t want to let anything go unrecorded. I’m also very excited to have the space to blog as I’ve been tweeting since last October and it demands a lot of discipline to keep within the 140 character limit!  Speaking of which, if anyone wants to follow me on Twitter, you can find me here – @kathrynbecher

So, now let me take you back to December…

Some of our smallest boys getting used to camping for the first time!

 Thanks to the generous funding provided by a long term supporter of AfCiC, and his Rotary group and community, we were able to take 47 children away for 3 days to Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley, so that they could experience a side of Kenya that they have never seen, and learn more about themselves as they learnt how to work together as a team putting up tents, climbing mountains, spotting wildlife, preparing food around the campfire, and so much more.

It’s hard to sum up the reactions of so many boys, so I’ll just let them speak for themselves, with these quotes from reports they wrote on their return to Thika –

“When I was climbing Mount Longonot, I struggled to get round it, but I kept moving and putting in more effort. I fell sometimes but I was keeping going round it. Even though it was difficult at times. When I finished going round it, I felt so happy. If I remember one thing, it was that this world has got many problems, but the most important thing to remember is to never give up!” (Julius, age 10)

“I learnt that if I work hard and study well then when I grow up I can take my children to beautiful places like Hells Gate National Park” (Lameck, age 13)

“I enjoyed it very very much because I saw very many wild animals which I never imagined that I could see in my lifetime” (Paul, age 16)

Celebrating a successful climb to the top of Mount Longonot in Naivasha!

Earlier in the month we were fortunate to receive support from a very prestigious Kenyan safari company, who paid for about 20 of our older youth undertaking skills training through our ‘Into Work’ project, and a group of about 10 children who we work with through our Outreach programmes, to visit Nairobi National Park for a day. It was great to have the opportunity to reward the Into Work group, as they are working so hard to build a future for themselves. It was a fantastic day and we were lucky to have a fun and knowledgeable guide who kept the whole group engaged throughout.

AfCiC’s ‘INTO WORK’ PROJECT - Committing to regular vocational training can be a big challenge when your background has been about survival and not about structure, so AfCiC works extremely hard to support this group of young men and women to be able to regularly attend and complete their training, to learn about important life skills, such as time keeping, dressing appropriately and managing your finances, and to understand the logistics of setting up a business or being an employee. The crucial part of this project is that we commit to moving them ‘into work’ at the end of their training. In an area like this, with an extremely high youth unemployment rate (65% in Kiandutu, Thika’s biggest slum area), just undertaking skills training is not enough. There must be genuine work at the end of it. 

December 22nd was our first ever formal graduation day for the ICC, not only to celebrate the completion of rehabilitation with the current cohort of boys, but also to welcome back many previous graduates to celebrate how far they have moved on, and also to inspire the children just about to return to school and their families.

Some of the children celebrating at the 1st ICC Graduation Day

In total we had 60+ children graduating, and many parents and supporters of AfCiC attended to join in the celebrations. Having been without power for a year in the centre, the children particularly enjoyed the DJ and music we had thanks to a generator we hired for the day!

I stayed in Thika over Christmas and New Year to continue working, and although I missed my family and friends, I’m very glad that I stayed. Christmas Day was a quiet day spent at our Centre with the children who were unable to return home due to the lack of a home, or the lack of a safe and welcoming home. We spent the morning listening to music, chatting with visitors who stopped by after church with donations, cooking, and eating mangoes. Then in the afternoon we were all invited to a colleague’s house to join her and her family for a late lunch. I was really touched by her generosity considering that 15 children and staff turned up at her house, and she responded with enormous plates of food, and an endless supply of sodas!

Recovering after an Enormous Christmas lunch!

Meat and chapattis are at the centre of a traditional Kenyan Christmas dinner, along with a combination of rice, potatoes, ugali (maize meal), sukuma wiki (spinach-like green veg),and cabbage, and having lived in Bradford in the UK prior to coming to Kenya in 2008, chapattis were a very welcome addition!  The children loved the afternoon, and I think it was a powerful experience for them to have a ‘traditional’ family Christmas, which for most of them was the first time.  

Quietness descended on AfCiC’s office in between Christmas and New Year, so I took advantage of the opportunity to get office-based work done, especially researching trusts and foundations to pursue for funding in 2010. A task which never seems to get done in the midst of the chaos that usually takes over our office!

Well that’s just a taste of what went on here as 2009 drew to a close. I feel tired just thinking about it! I have very high hopes for AfCiC in 2010 and I hope you’ll continue to follow my blog as the year progresses. Please do get in contact by commenting on my blog or through Twitter and ask as many questions as you like! I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

After a year of volunteering for Action for Children in Conflict (AfCiC), I still can’t believe that I have been able to return to Kenya as a staff member in their team, and that we now have an extra year of space and time to sustain and grow the charity.

As AfCiC’s new Head of Fundraising and Development, my focus has been to help identify the most significant areas of need and to plan strategies for sourcing funding and support. Being surrounded by our beneficiaries and seeing their needs first hand continues to keep me motivated & passionate about enabling the charity to help more people in the most effective ways.

AfCiC’s work focuses closely on the reasons that children leave home and take to the streets, so that in addition to offering support to street children themselves, we can also prevent children from going to the street in the first place, and ideally also provide support to their wider family. For example, an ongoing issue in Kenya is access to food, which remains one of our key priorities as food prices continue to rise and the climate continues to add to the country’s problems with food and water shortages.

Along with AfCiC’s management team, I’m also researching and planning staff training opportunities for the year ahead, so that AfCiC’s amazing staff team can continue to grow and develop their skills and expertise. This month we had training for all staff in Occupational First Aid and, over the next couple of months, we’re hoping to organise drug awareness training and training in facilitation skills. Next month will also be Junior First Aid for a selected group of children who we work with, which is especially important given their exposure to dangerous street and slum life.

This month saw the successful implementation of our 3^rd Street Child Census, which was last conducted in 2007. Working alongside many compatible partner agencies, schools and individuals, our staff worked day and night to collect comprehensive information from local street children about what takes them to the street, life on the street, and their aspirations and fears, etc. We are now processing and analysing the data so that we, and other local NGOs and relevant organisations, can use the learning to shape our work with street children and keep it as relevant as possible.

Being able to continue with my youth work and sports coaching has been fantastic. I feel inspired and motivated to do the rest of my work by my interactions with the many children and adults who we work with, whether that be Samson – an endlessly entertaining 6 year old former street child undergoing rehabilitation in our Interim Care Centre; Geoffrey – a partially paralysed 21 year old successfully running his first business in mobile phone repair thanks to Skills Training and Business set up support; or Jack – a former long term street boy who has just completed Nursery School, aged 12, and who can now finally enter primary school and get the basic qualifications that he needs for his future.

The Interim Care Centre’s Running Club that I set up over a year ago with a colleague is progressing very well! Thanks to a donation from the UK last month, we have just managed to kit out the whole club in matching shorts, t-shirts and shoes, which was a major boost for the children who value a smart appearance to counteract the usual negative stereotypes about street children.  Getting up at 5.30am for the club can be quite painful but it’s totally worth it for such productive and fun time with a great group of children!

We were lucky to get some good media coverage this month. Firstly we featured on the BBC World Service, talking about a radio play we created this year through our performing arts project, Hear Our Voice. Then I was interviewed by the host of an American running podcast about the ICC Running Club and AfCiC’s work in general, so I’m hoping for some interest in the charity from the US running community. I am also working with a colleague on giving our website a major overhaul, to better reflect the character of our AfCiC, to generate more interest in our work, and to provide more educational materials about the issues facing street and other vulnerable children. I have secured the funding so now we are just looking for the right designers to partner with… so watch this space!

Oh and finally, I have been initiated into the wonderful world of Twitter thanks to the Vodafone’s encouragement!!  I’ve already met some amazing people as a result, and we’ve had many offers of support, including volunteering, publicity and media interviews, donations, and just recently the offer of a free documentary!  So please follow me @kathrynbecher if you want to keep up to date with AfCiC’s work and follow @WOD_UK for further updates from the World of Difference programme!