Self Help Group project, Eastleigh

Muslim Women's Self Help Group

Leadership Training

Nairobi, Kenya

It has been a rainy week here in Nairobi, and with the rain comes mud and traffic! Life slows down as the city deals with flooding streets, downed power lines and leaky roofing. When the rain comes in Kenya, it pours! But people never complain about the rains here, because in a land prone to draught, rain is always a blessing!

We've enjoyed a similar rush of blessing pouring into our Canadian Baptist Ministries Urban Muslim Women's Self Help Group project in Eastleigh. Over the past month, five new groups have been formed with women wanting to work together to improve there lives and the lives of their families through self help initiatives. Erica, Laura and Aisha brought representatives from each of these groups together this week at Heart Lodge to train them on the nuts and bolts of the self help group approach and encourage these women as emerging leaders within their community.

Laura Muema leading a training session on self help group

savings and financial management

We are excited to see the project expand from the original Iftin Self Help Groups in Eastleigh's Section One, to now include five new groups from the broader area. Our prayer is that this ministry will continue to grow and expand as women continue to help other women to build a better future.

Having some fun during the SHG Training

Please continue to pray for these Somali and Oromo women as they step forward as leaders in their community empowering other women and girls. To learn more, you can search our blog for more information on the self help group approach and watch a video interview from our larger SHG conference on vimeo at http://vimeo.com/35389128

Food for Work Project

North East Province, Kenya

(Photo by Gabriel Craven)

Canadian Baptist Ministries Drought Response Project continues this week as we begin a "food for work project" with two vulnerable villages along the Tana River, South East of Garissa. Our colleagues Yattani Gollo and William Wako are coordinating efforts with village elders to clear scrub bush from roads and the flood plain. The communities have selected the sites for the work that will open travel between their villages and the larger town. "Removing the thorn bushes will improve security," shared Yattani. "Many women and children walk these paths in fear of attackers lurking in the mathenga (local thorny brush that covers most of Northeast Province)." The opened roads will also provide improved access to the community farms that will be cleared of mathenga over the coming months by the community members. Over the next three months, approximately 2000 people will receive supplementary food rations through this project as we help the community recover from the drought and rebuild their farms.

Praying for Somalia

Children in the Dadaab Refugee Camp of Ifo

Erica is in Dadaab again this week with our friend Amanda Lindhout. They spent today in the refugee camps visiting with new arrivals. Between 1300 and 1500 new people are being registered into the camps each day. At one point, Erica and Amanda were visiting a family outside the camp who had a very sick child. They helped the mother bring her daughter to the hospital. The medical facilities of the camps are over run, as they respond the affects of the famine. Please continue to pray for the Somali refugees crossing over into Kenya and for the famine relief within Dhobley and the surrounding area.

Canadian Baptist Ministries is also involved in emergency food relief in other drought affected areas in Kenya's Northeastern and Eastern Provinces. We appreciate your support and prayers.

Tonight, Erica and Amanda will be going to the UN compound where Amanda is being interviewed by Anderson Cooper for CNN.

Anderson Cooper 360

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/

Update on the Drought

http://abcnews.go.com/International/somalia-famine-relief-progress-slow-race-save-millions/story?id=14249541&page=2

Noor Designs

Noor Creations

On Monday, the CBC documentary crew and Amanda Lindhout joined us again with the Noor Creations Self Help jewelry project. The Noor ladies are excited to be partnering with Amanda's Global Enrichment Foundation which is looking at selling their bracelets in Canada.

Erica and Amanda working with

the Noor girls on bracelet designs

Zahra and Tunis sorting unfinished beads

Erica working on designs with the ladies

Hawa finishing Solidarity Necklaces

Some of the Noor bracelets

Telling Their Story

Dan Klinck, Aaron & Erica, Amanda Lindhout, Louis DeGuise, and Curt Petrovich (Gabriel Craven behind the camera)

Over the past two days, we have had the pleasure of hosting Amanda Lindhout and reporters from CBC television's The National, as they connect with the Somali refugee women of Iftin and learn more about their stories and experiences.

In 2008, Amanda was kidnapped just outside the Somali capital of Mogadishu and held hostage for fifteen months. During her captivity, she vowed that if she survived that she would dedicate her life to helping Somali women. Four months after her release, she founded the Global Enrichment Foundation and established the Somali Women's Scholarship Program.

Through the internet, Amanda and her team learned about the Iftin Women's Empowerment Project and became interested in how the project is impacting refugee women living within the Muslim ghetto of Eastleigh, Nairobi. We were thrilled to hear that they were interested in partnering with the Noor Creations ceramic bead self help project that Erica established with the Eastleigh Community Centre two years ago. This afternoon, they will be working with the women to develop a bracelet that should be available in Canada later this year.

Curt and Louis are travelling with Amanda to film a documentary on her return to Africa and the work of her foundation. We had a great time yesterday meeting with ladies from each of the projects and joining the group on a walk of Eastleigh and Mathare Valley. We were also joined by Gabriel, a free lance photo journalist. During the walk, we attracted a throng of young children. Several little ones that could not have been much older than two, grabbing our hands and walking barefoot through the slum.

To learn more about the Global Enrichment Foundation, you can check out their website below:

http://globalenrichmentfoundation.com/

Drought in the Horn of Africa

PHOTO/TOM MARUKO/NATION

A malnourished Somali child in hospital at the Dadaab refugee camp on July 11, 2011. Thousands of Somalis are fleeing the war and drought in their country.

Over the past weeks, reports in Kenya about the dramatic rise in Somali refugees entering the country have been all over the local media. Drought has been a cyclical phenomena in East Africa for centuries, but the political instability of countries like Somali seems to dramatically increase the impact of drought upon the lives of the most vulnerable. Below is a brief article from our local newspaper, the Nation, sent to us by our colleague Yattani Gollo. Please keep the people of Somalia in your prayers, and for wisdom as churches, organizations and government work together to serve people in crisis.

Blessings,

the Kennys

Story by AGGREY MUTAMBO amutambo@ke.nationmedia.com

The UN calls on Kenya to open a new refugee camp

The head of the UN refugee agency Antonio Guterres was taken aback by the pathetic state of affairs at the camp, one of the word’s largest, when he visited at the weekend. “I have visited refugee camps around the world, but I must admit I have never seen people living under such conditions,” he said. According to UNHCR, the camp initially set up to cater for only 90,000 refugees, has now exceeded the number by nearly five times.

‘Poorest of the poor’

Mr Guterres described the refugees flocking to Daadab as “the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.” The UN refugee agency is still pressing the Kenyan government to accept the completion of IFO II camp to admit another group of at least 35,000 people. The other camps are Dagahaley, Ifo and Hagadera. The situation has been worsened by the current drought in the Horn of Africa region, which is estimated to have affected at least 10 million people across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia. International aid firm Oxfam expressed support for the UNHCR appeal, saying that opening up of Ifo II would enable relief agencies to reach the refugees. “It is tragic that vulnerable families are trapped in limbo, forced to endure appalling conditions while there are fully functioning services right next door. Their basic needs are being ignored,” said Joost van de Lest, head of Oxfam in Kenya.

The number of refugees at the camp continues to increase every day even as it emerges that it is not just the war in Somalia that is pushing them into Kenya — many are escaping the hunger and famine back home. They arrive in droves, with most of the women and children too weak to walk or even stand. At the camp’s hospital are malnourished children with spindly limbs, wrinkled skin and pale eyes on beds beside their sad mothers. Ms Isha Abdulrahman from Jubaland and a mother of twin boys is at the hospital. One of the boys is clinging to her breasts as she cuddles the other in her arms — the one who is recovering from near-starvation. Ms Abdulrahman said she travelled from Saqu in the middle of Jubaland in Somalia where she had been a farmer. “A harsh drought wiped away all our crops,” she told the Nation through a translator. She arrived here three weeks ago. By the time she arrived here, the weaker of her twins was almost succumbing to hunger.