Some children who are supported by Youth for Hope live in the children’s home “Watoto Mbele”, some with their parents and others are housed in boarding schools. Youth for Hope pays school fees and thus enables school and vocational training so that the young people can later stand on their own two feet. With the children’s home, Youth for Hope also offers a place where the children and young people can grow up in a protected environment. Youth for Hope also provides psychological support for the children where necessary.
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Youth for Hope
Kenia
2021
Children and adolescents from the poorest of backgrounds are given the opportunity to attend a school or an apprenticeship as well as to grow up in the protected environment of the children’s home. Families are also supported financially and materially. For this purpose, in addition to the existing children’s home, a Covid-19 support project was launched in 2020 to support families who have lost their livelihood due to the pandemic.
Project name
Youth for Hope
Location
Kenia
Project partner
The association Youth for Hope was founded in Switzerland in 2006 to support children and young people in Kenya. Today Youth for Hope runs a children's home in Ngong (near Nairobi), Kenya and supports around 60 children and young people and their families both financially and materially.
Project partner's website
Project partner's aim
Ensuring a protected environment in which children and adolescents can grow up and develop, as well as enabling schooling and vocational training, so that they can later stand on their own two feet and face their lives independently. Likewise, support for entire family systems, currently also due to Covid-19, in order to counteract hunger and poverty.
Aim of the BeA Foundation
- Ensuring the running costs for the children’s home
- Covering the wages of employees on site (house mothers, social workers, psychologists)
- Covering the school fees for the children and young people
- Support of the currently new Covid-19 support project for families who have lost their livelihood due to the pandemic.
Support for children and young people
Family support
It is very important to Youth for Hope that the children and young people do not lose contact with their relatives, even if they can no longer live with them for various reasons. In addition to enabling regular visits to parents, grandparents, aunts or other relatives, Youth for Hope also supports the families of the children and young people financially.
Covid-19 support project
Many families are in dire straits due to Covid-19. They lost their jobs as day laborers, market women or water carriers. Schools in Kenya were closed in March 2020 and to a large extent still are. Children who were provided with up to three meals a day at school before Covid-19 are now at home, where money, currently more than ever, is extremely scarce and not enough to be able to prepare at least two meals a day. Youth for Hope supports the families by taking over rental costs, basic food, clean drinking water and disinfectants.
Family
The children and young people hate the word “children’s home”. For them it is their family and the local housemother is their grandmother. The children’s home is small, familiar and actually more of an extended family than a home. The director of the children’s home knows each child and their story personally and has a personal relationship with everyone.