24^th January 2012, will remain a very special day for Jane Njeri Musungui.  Njeri is a Maasai girl aged 11 years and living with her parents in Kiandutu slums in Thika. Njeri could not read nor write. She has never had the opportunity to attend school despite the Kenyan government having introduced free primary education in 2003.

Njeri’s father was married before in his prime years but later abandoned his children and his first wife in the Maasai land. Many years later, he realized he was getting old (now over 70 years) and decided to remarry a woman with children. He got married to Njeri’s mother with whom (and the children) they settled in Kiandutu slums in Thika.  He never took the children to school since he did not want to incure any costs other that providing food to his family. According to him, he believed that his work was to provide only food to the family. This meant that Njeri and her siblings would not access a much needed basic right of education.

Through Macheo’s social workers under the Education Empowerment program, Njeri and 11 other children were identified and thanks to our sponsors, the children could be taken into the program. The program seeks to give opportunities to children who have never been to school. These children get a chance to study and attain the minimum level required of education that would enable them get reintegrated to the regular public primary schools, and study just like the other children.

 The program involves intensive individual training to help them get to the same level of at least class one or two in the regular schools. At the same time, the teacher and social workers also work closely with the guardians since most of them are not educated and do not understand why their children should be get education.

This program in Macheo is intend to;

• Identify children who have missed the chance of being in school
• Prepare these children for a chance to join regular public schools
• Reintegrate them into the regular public schools normal
• Provide lunch and uniform so that they have the required needs while in school
• Provide psychosocial support to help them cope with some of the challenges they have faced before.
• Work with the parents/guardians, community, schools teachers, government and other stakeholders to ensure that all children enjoy the right to be in school.

Njeri is very happy to have such an opportunity. The teacher is giving her extra attention since in her case; she has never had even a single day in school in her life. She is very motivated and yearning to get education which she believes will transform her life and that of her family. Under normal circumstances, Njeri is supposed to be in class 6 like other children of her age. This however, does not to dampen her drive to acquire education.

Njeri is among many children in Kiandutu and other urban slums in Kenya who miss out on a chance to be educated. Due to poor social economic status, the guardians do not fully understand the need for education and they end up depriving their own children the opportunity. We have found that these children often take the role of the guardians, some are victims of child labour and neglect, some baby-sit their siblings.  Many others are victims to different retrogressive cultural practices.

To reach more of such children and commence a journey of transforming their lives, Macheo’s invites you to join hands. Check out more on this and other programs of Macheo through our website www.macheo.org

Macheo has been using the same office since 2006 even with the growth that has seen employees using that office drastically increase through the years.

The office was becoming congested by having so many people around and thus affecting privacy, which is much needed, for specific programs.

With the extended office, a lot will change in improving the way we do things. In the past, we had 2 rooms and open space. But now we have four private rooms a

nd two open offices. The individual offices will be held by the Director,-Marnix, the accounts office-Simon and Julie, the children’s home social workers-Grace, Esther, Benson and Solomon, and finally the outreach-Joan and Faith. All the programs will get representation in every office. The rest of the employees will occupy the open offices as they are the support team.

Asked how this would benefit the social workers, Grace shared with us the need for privacy especially on the files of the children which are highly confidential. She went on to add on how happy she was to get an office with the rest of the social workers, since there will be more room to share and discuss about the children, unlike in the past where we had to share offices and thus meetings would be held elsewhere. But what stood out most was the fact that this will facilitate more confidence in children to directly visit the social workers office, without any worry of privacy while they shared. In the past there were incidences where children would shy off.

We would like to appreciate everybody who made this possible for us. This will go a long way in improving the way things are done all for the future of Macheo Children’s Centre.  Some of other benefits, just to name a few, will be;

• our daily planning as the new setting allows people from our different programs and projects to work closely together
• A better team spirit as working closely together will allow more interaction in better settings
• The flow of work will be amazing since people working together are closely linked with each other
• There is room for creativity and brainstorming ideas
• There will be room for volunteers who come and share with us a wealth of information

We are assured of a better 2012 where we move close into achieving our vision and our goals (resolutions). Join us this year and share something we do with people around you.

One of the resolutions for 2012 is to feed 1,500,000 meals to needy children in our education program.

The education program is beyond getting a meal a day. I have met countless children in the streets missing an opportunity to enjoy the free primary education, play with children their age, or maybe that they are too hungry to concentrate in school. It is an opportunity for a boy or a girl to get a balanced diet thus is in good health, for a child to play with other children, and opportunity to for a child to achieve his/ her dreams amidst all other challenges.

A lot has been put in place to make this program a success. It has it’s challenges and that is why this year there has been several meetings to ensure that all goes on smoothly through the year. We would like to appreciate our donors for their donation, the children, the school administration, and the cooks among others.

Just to share some of the preparation underway……….

There are several meetings which are aimed at making the foundation of this program this year even better. The preparations include; making note of performance indicators, the activities involved, chances and impact of risks that could occur and the control measures that could see us ensure the beneficiaries get a balanced meal. A new way of working with our suppliers with new forms introduced. And on the ground, an auditor who will visit all the schools at random and check whether or not the children are eating the right quantity. Having someone on the ground will see us work on many challenges or risks that could arise. There will also be a feedback form for the cooks to ensure that they are cooking the right amounts of meal, there is cooperation from the school administration.

We will benefit from savings made from energy-saving-jikos bought for the 14 schools that previously used too much firewood. This will also benefit the cooks who in the past had to cook with wood which was sometimes wet thus they inhaled a lot of smoke. The rural schools will also benefit from Bio-sand water filters that purify the water and the children can finally enjoy clean water in their schools.

The manager, Faith has been busy visiting the school to adjust the annual contracts while at the same time meeting the parents. The turn out, as faith has put it, was average for the four schools visited late this week. Since most of these parents have to work with a big number of them being casual labours who depend fully on what they earn during everyday day worked, we understood. She had a chance to speak to the parents and encourage them to contribute towards their children getting a balanced meal in school thus avoiding so many dangers the children would face if they were to leave the school to go and buy lunch or borrow from others.

To get more information on the education program, visit our website.

Our new year resolutions are:

• serve over 1,500,000 balanced meals to needy children;
• provide high-quality individual care to the 93 children depending on Macheo Children’s Home;
• assist 30 needy children, mostly girls, with sponsoring their education;
• have a lasting positive impact on more than 200 families through our family empowerment program;
• assist over 700 children in dealing with their trauma’s through our psychological health program;
• offer individual treatment, home-based care and mother-child healthcare to many needy families in Kiandutu slum;
• assist over 150 malnourished children with special meals and training for their caregivers;
• assist 2,000 girls with sanitary pads;
• deworm 30,000 needy children.

Macheo’s staff is ready for 2012. Together with our donors, volunteers and other well-wishers we hope to have the biggest possible impact on the children around us who need our help so much!