Friends of Ngong Road

Providing education and support to Nairobi children living in poverty whose families are affected by HIV/AIDS.

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Our students are now in lockdown.

Dear friends,

We learned late Friday afternoon that due to a significant escalation in the rate of COVID infections, especially in Nairobi, the President of Kenya has announced containment measures. Nairobi county and four adjacent counties have been declared to be a “red zone” and movement into and out of this area has been prohibited as of midnight on Friday.

Included among the measures being announced are: reimposition of the dusk-to-dawn curfew, absolutely no gatherings of groups of people for any reason, all in-person education is being suspended and all public and private sector employees are encouraged to work from home. In other words, Nairobi is on lockdown. News reports from Kenya indicate that the South Africa variant, which is apparently more contagious, is the primary source of the recent surge in infections.  We have also heard reports that all ICU beds in Nairobi are full. Our team in Kenya had an emergency meeting by Zoom on Saturday to discuss key implications (see Q&A below).

We will keep you updated on the rapidly evolving situation in Kenya. Please be aware that if you are expecting a response to recent correspondence, this situation may slow our ability to get students to write emails in Kenya. This situation highlights the challenges faced as our world copes with this truly global pandemic. 
Here are the key implications of this lockdown to students:

Q:  Will students remain in school for in-person education?
A:  No. Children have been in school since January 2 but have now been sent home. The only exception is that students who have just finished high school and are sitting for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) will complete their exams in April. Students who are attending a boarding school outside of the five counties have been given two days to proceed to their homes. We are supporting that with bus fare and by making contact with their schools.

Q.  We had many extra activities scheduled for students during their brief April holidays: Life Skills training, Sexual & Reproductive Health training and Drug & Substance Awareness training. Will those training programs happen? 
A:  No. All of those special training programs will have to be rolled out sometime in the future. However, the case managers will use a bulk SMS process to both disseminate information on Sexual & Reproductive Health to students and to sensitize parents / guardians to emerging issues affecting students now home from school (e.g. substance abuse, teen pregnancy, etc.)

Q:  Are students in post-secondary programs affected by this lockdown.
A: Yes. All in-person instruction has been suspended. Our staff will follow up with every institution to understand their plans. When possible, we will loan post-secondary students a laptop if online education is proceeding.

Q:  How will the students get enough food to eat?
A:  We had planned a school holiday lunch program and will seek county government approval to proceed by offering a packed lunch to students. If that fails, we will have to develop an alternative plan. We have a food aid budget to provide food packets for 27 needy families per month in 2021. This program may have to be expanded depending on how long this lockdown continues.

Q:  How will you keep in touch with students and their families?
A:  As we did during the 2020 lockdowns, our case managers will contact all students by phone and will get an update on their situation from parents or guardians. The case managers will encourage closer scrutiny of students in an effort to keep them on track while they are home.  

Q:  How will the Ngong Road Children’s Foundation staff operate?
A:  The staff will continue its work-from-home rotation and will continue to follow guidelines related to mask wearing, social distancing, and cleaning. The staff are being encouraged to get a vaccine and have been provided with a letter to show they are frontline workers. Vaccine availability in Kenya is limited, but some members of our team have already been vaccinated.

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Note from Paula – December 2020

December is a busy time of year for all non-profit organizations, and Friends of Ngong Road is no exception. Like most U.S. non-profits, we raise a disproportionate amount of our annual budget in the 4th quarter and next year always goes better when we end this year strong. Our focus is on raising $75,000 to meet the Truscott match for our Annual Appeal – if you haven’t yet had a chance to donate, please click here to make a gift today. 

In Kenya, our team is working at full throttle to prepare to get all students back to in-person school on January 4. Uniforms, school supplies and books are being purchased and school fees are being paid. We are also in the process of identifying a new office location in Nairobi as our current setting is no longer a fit for our needs – we hope to move early in 2021.

With your help, we fed 300 program families daily between April and year-end. This was a big undertaking, organized as the world quickly evolved with the onset of COVID-19. We raised the necessary funds to pay for food and used a partner church as a safe distribution facility. When students return to school in January, families will face less financial stress and we expect to move to our more standard approach to family food aid – giving food packets as needed to families in the most challenging situations.

The Friends of Ngong Road board of directors recently affirmed our 5-year strategy to “double our impact”. What this means is that we will, by the end of 2024, have more than 1000 young people in Kenya on their journey to life transformation. Just today, I got an update on Mercy Akinyi, sponsored faithfully by one Twin Cities couple since 2008. Mercy has just completed her 3-year coursework to become a nurse. She will take two days of exams in January and again in April, after which she will have earned her nursing licenses, enabling her to secure permanent employment. The school she attended is managed by a hospital and she will likely have an opportunity to work at that hospital. Kenya needs qualified nurses and Mercy is on her way!

For these and dozens of similar life stores, we are deeply grateful for you – the donors and supporters who make this work possible. While pandemic and other challenges will continue, we have learned that when young people have hope for a better future, many of them find a way to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles! Together, our job is to just give them a chance. Thank you and best wishes for a happy holiday season!

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Launch of “Food from Friends”

Dear friends,

Last week I told you that one of Friends of Ngong Road’s priorities in our COVID-19 response in Kenya is to focus on family food aid. We are calling this new initiative Food from Friends. In the course of a normal week during normal times, our program provides elementary-age students with breakfast and lunch each school day as well as a hearty lunch on Saturdays. Boarding school students receive 3 meals daily plus tea. As a result, when students are home these families experience extreme stress in just providing food for everyone.

Caseworkers for Ngong Road Children’s Foundation have contacted each family in our program over the past week. So far, no families in our program (including staff) have been diagnosed with COVID- 19. But, we’ve learned that two-thirds of our families have no source of income during the economic lockdown in Kenya. There are very serious limitations on movement and economic engagement including a curfew from dusk to dawn each day, enforced by police. Thus, our focus is to provide food aid for those families with no source of income. In our first week we distributed 130 food packets, but we must do more. 

Each food packet contains beans and rice, corn flour and cooking fat. Families eat beans and rice as a meal. The corn flour is used to make a staple dish called ugali (a thick cornmeal mush) that is typically eaten with collard greens or spinach. A food packet costs about $10 ($40 a month) and we estimate will feed a family of four at least one meal a day for a week.

We expect the need for food to grow as Kenya’s shutdown goes from days to weeks. Thank you for your commitment to providing Food From Friends. Please click on the Donate button to give today.

Sincerely,

Paula Meyer

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Personal connections, a world away.

Friends of Ngong Road has worked for 14 years with students on the other side of the planet and somehow hundreds of sponsors and supporters have found a way to build personal connections with Kenyans. In fact, Friends of Ngong Road is deeply committed to helping sponsors and donors build relationships with the students in our program. In our world today, now challenged by COVID-19, we may be a world away but personal connections are still indispensable! 

Students, our Kenyan staff, and their families are all fine so far. There are a total of 28 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Kenya. As of March 25 at midnight, no more international flights are allowed in the country. Kenya’s government has imposed a dusk to dawn curfew from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily. The president and his deputy have taken a 80% cut in pay and all other high-ranking officials have taken a 50% cut. The government has also made the important step of waiving income tax for people who earn less than 24,000 KSH per month (about $240) and reducing income tax for higher wage earners.

Our normal process is to distribute 15 food packets monthly for families in the greatest need. From March 23rd to 27th alone we distributed 50. We will try to increase this food distribution as we get more information about where the greatest need lies. A food packet is pretty basic: 1 kg beans, 2 kg rice, 500 g of cooking fat and 4 kg of maize flour. This food provides the basis for a family of four to eat at least one time daily for a week. The maize flour is used to make a cornmeal mush called ugali, Kenya’s staple food. It is typically eaten with collard greens or kale. 

The Kenyan offices are operating with a skeleton staff and handling meetings by appointment only. The computer lab and library are closed. We may allow some students to use it by appointment in the coming days and weeks. Case workers are making weekly calls to each of the families they support and through that, we are collecting data on how many people are still able to work, how many have traveled to rural areas in an effort to protect themselves and how many are in dire need of support.  

Thank you for the personal connections you have made with our friends in Kenya. We’re all in this together!

Paula Meyer
President and Founder

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Notes from Paula – March 2020

Dear friends,

Greetings from a world that has changed. We are all coping as we work to understand what COVID-19 will mean for people across the globe and what the downstream economic harm is likely to be. Like most people, I don’t yet understand the long-term implications however I have already deeply internalized an important lesson: We are all in this together!  Viruses do not respect borders, income levels or political preferences. We all have to pull together to overcome this threat.

In that spirit, Friends of Ngong Road board members Amy Johnson, Keith Kale and I have been working long days for the past ten days to establish a Crisis Management process for Ngong Road Children’s Foundation (NRCF) and Karibu Loo (KLL) in Kenya and for Friends of Ngong Road (FoNR) in the United States. Teams meet daily in Kenya while the U.S. and global teams confer weekly. We have taken steps to reduce expenses in both organizations with a goal of weathering this storm.

There are several important staff changes you should know about…

  • Lacey Kraft joined Friends of Ngong Road as our first full-time paid employee in February 2016.  Her assignment was to build upon the work volunteers did during Friends of Ngong Road’s first ten years and formalize the organization’s development program.  Lacey tackled this assignment with great energy and made significant contributions during her four years with the organization. Sadly, she has decided to leave for another non-profit in the Twin Cities. We are sorry to see Lacey go and wish her all the best in the future.
  • We have made the difficult decision to eliminate the position of Program Director spanning both NRCF and KLL in Kenya.  Maureen Mulievi is the current incumbent in that role and has served the organizations well. We are sorry to say goodbye to Maureen and wish her the best in her future endeavors. In this environment, we believe the organization must streamline leadership so we are as effective and efficient as possible.
  • Kelvin Thuku will assume leadership of NRCF while Emmanuel Mukasa (business development) and Steve Muendo (operations) will co-lead Karibu Loo through the crisis.  

In all cases, Kenyan staff members will report to Crisis Management teams comprised of people in both countries.

In Kenya, the immediate and significant need is for food aid.  Families in our community faced great food insecurity before this crisis hit.  Today, they are also told to stay home and work remotely – except when your work is casual labor such as cleaning homes, doing laundry or construction, remote work is not possible.  And these families don’t eat if they don’t work. We are increasing food aid and appreciate your support in helping us feed these children and their families. For $35/week we can provide enough basics so a family of four can eat at least one meal daily – with 255 families with children in our program, the unplanned-for cost could be as high as $9,000 per month.

If you would like to help us provide food aid in Kenya, please click here. We are all in this together, thank you!