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The Changaro Trust

The Changaro Trust is a project in Nairobi, Kenya that Crafting Gentleness is affiliated to.

If you would like to know more please read on.

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

A friend of Anthony McCann's, Kennedy Keraro, is working to create a purpose-built residential centre for vulnerable children in Nairobi, Kenya. The Changaro Trust Residential Centre, in partnership with other charitable organizations in Kenya, will provide a safe haven for up to twenty five children and will offer education and support for hundreds more.

The children with whom the Changaro Trust will be working will have experienced many difficulties, including poverty, broken families, death of their parents due to Malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases, unfavorable inheritance laws (especially for girls who are not entitled to benefit from family estates in most communities in Kenya). Many end up living on the streets.According to a recent UNESCO report there are 80-100,000 street children in Nairobi, a city with a population of 2 million people. About 60 percent of these children are receiving no education, and more than a third have to fend for themselves.

In rural Kenya as well, children as young as six are looking after their families because their parents have died. These children are forced by their situations to become the main bread winners and usually take full parental responsibilities for even younger siblings. They do not go to school, live in very poor and unsafe houses, cannot afford medical attention, and are sometimes victims of various forms of abuse.

Approximately £100,000 needs to be raised in the next eighteen months in order to build and maintain the centre. If you would like to help us raise this money please contact Kennedy (see below).

The Changaro Trust will build the residential centre on some land that has been made available for the use of the Trust by Kennedy Keraro. Kennedy is a native of Nairobi who lived in Derry for four years, only recently returning home to help establish the Changaro Trust as a legal entity in the Kenyan capital.

As well as being famous as a tourist destination, Kenya is also a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation. Street children in Nairobi are referred to as “chokora” or "rubbish scavengers" in Swahili, and are frequently the victims of violence and abuse. Children such as those in Kenya’s capital city have been designated by the international children’s charity UNICEF as being “in need of special protection”.

The reduction of Kenyan government spending on education, health, and social services has meant that many support services now have to be run by religious organisations, NGOs, and charities such as the Changaro Trust. The work of the Changaro Trust will include the development of an educational program for the children, including lifeskills such as hygiene, conflict resolution, peer training, critical thinking, and confidence-building. The Trust will also promote advocacy and will lobby for the rights of the street child at various levels, from local-level politics to the formulation of policy at governmental levels.

If you would like to donate to this charity (legally registered, but they don't use charity numbers in Kenya) please send your money to:

Kennedy Keraro, P.O Box 17607-00500, Enterprise Road, Nairobi, Kenya
Email: kokeraro [at] yahoo.com

Related websites and similar projects:

Nairobi’s Street Children: Hope for Kenya’s future generation
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=69987

Nairobi’s Street Children
http://www.ukweli.net/TabletArticle.htm

Child participation in awareness raising through theatre
http://www.amref.org/docs/Child%20participation%20in%20awareness%20raising%20through%20theatre.pdf

Shangilia: Rejoice Child of Africa
http://www.shangilia.org/about.html

The Magnitude of Need
http://www.kidshomeinternational.org/Need.htm

Youth in Crisis
http://www.irinnews.org/pdf/in-depth/Youth-in-crisis-IRIN-In-Depth.pdf

The First Hope Archive.

The Second Hope Archive.

The Third Hope Archive.