August 2020 - Friends of Ngong Road

By: Case Manager Mary Muriu

Listen to the full interview at:
https://illumini.podbean.com/

Rodney lives with his mother, brother, and nephew in the Kawangware slum of Nairobi. The family lives in a one room house made of iron sheets and timber. He joined High School this year and has been living at home since the pandemic hit and schools closed in March. His mother’s previous job was selling firewood to the slum dwellers but stopped due to a lack of buyers as many people are struggling in the slums as a result of the pandemic. In mid-June, the family was evicted due to rent arrears amounting to KES 6000 (USD $60). Their belongings were locked in the house and they had to leave everything behind with only the clothes they had on.

After they were evicted, the family went to live with a relative who lived nearby. They bought them clothes and offered them shelter as they tried to make enough money to pay what they owed for the rent.

Rodney’s mother found work washing clothes for income, but it didn’t produce much income. Yet, the little cash earned was used to offset rent arrears. Thankfully, after a month of staying with the relative, the landlord agreed to open the house and the family happily returned to their home. During this challenging time, the NRCF program provided food aid and supported Rodney with school revision materials.

We appreciate sponsors for continued support for families like Rodney’s, and the many others that are experiencing hardship during this time.

Mary Muriu
Senior Case Manager
Ngong Road Children’s Foundation

Listen to full interview

Friends,

In a typical school year, case managers have lots of interactions with students where they check in about how the students are doing in school, how their families are doing at home, and about the health of the students and their families. These check-ins are part of the regular programming at Saturday Program, camp, home and school visits, meetings with families, and during school marks collection.

However, during this pandemic, the opportunities for these check-ins have disappeared. As a result, the case managers have been calling every family about once a month to ask questions regarding updates to the family’s situation, health, and the student’s ability to do schoolwork at home.

In May, sponsors received an update from case managers about their sponsored students and their families. Since that time, we have built a survey system in our data management system so we can collect and analyze the information we receive, and so we can publish it to sponsors more easily. This data collection allows us to see trends in what is happening to the families in the program, and identify situations where we can help make things easier. Below is some of the summarized data.

Information Reported	Number of responses out of 365	Total percentage
No one in the household is working	54	14.79%
Reported decrease in household income	307	84.11%
At high risk for eviction	48	13.15%
Receiving and doing assignments at home	187	51.23%
Student doesn’t have necessary technology to complete assignments	27	7.40%

We have published the information collected by the case managers about your student to your sponsor portal so you can learn about how your student and family is managing in the midst of the pandemic. In addition, we will be sending the results to your email, so keep an eye out for it this afternoon.

If you are not yet a sponsor and are interested in sponsoring a student, please visit us at www.ngongroad.org/sponsor.

Michon Garrett
Information Systems and Business Manager
Friends of Ngong Road

Rodney’s Story

COVID-19 NRCF Family Tracking Report by Michon Garrett

Archives for August 2020