Alice and Jean part 2--GIVING HOPE PROGRAM

Sunday 22 March 2009 Today Jean and Alice want to share what we have learned about the Giving Hope Program established by ZOE here in Kenya. The office of Giving Hope is located on the campus of the Maua Methodist Hospital and was started two years ago. ZOE started the program to help the orphans of AIDS vitims. These children are identified by community churches and the hospital and have the blessing of community and church leaders. It enables these children to stay within their community where they have been living with their families. There are three categories of children: 1) no parents 60% 2) living with grandparents; parents dead from HIV/AIDS 3) living with a very sick parent. Presently there are 4000 children and 997 families in the program. Focus is on empowering the oldest child in the family to support siblings and to run the household. The families are organized as groups within their community and work together. Each separate group selects their own leaders and an adult volunteer mentor. Initially each group is given a grant and establishes a bank account. The money is used for microfinance proposals to set up businesses.
ZOE helps the children acquire survival skills by providing training or apprenticeships. These can be as bakers, seamstresses, mechanics and small business entrepreneurs. There are six key invertentions: 1) food preparation including growing gardens, 2) environment preparation such as tilling the land, building a house, 3) health preparation 4) child rights ( property ownership of deceased parent' s land may require a petition to the district land office), 5) household livelihood, 6) HIV awareness. Groups are required to meet weekly with their leaders and mentors reporting to the ZOE once a month. Twenty-five families form a group and the total may be 100 or more including siblings. There is a 75% success rate for the Giving Hope Program since it began two years ago. The goal is for families to graduate from the group after three years. But they aim to remain connected to the group and to provide inspiration, role models and possible mentors for younger children.
OUMC is the first ZOE team working with Giving Hope in Kenya and building a home for a member of the Giving Hope program. Until tomorrow, Alice Finnell and Jean Hedrick