Kibagari

KIBAGARE COMPASSION GROUP, NAIROBI, KENYA.

BACKGROUND

Kibagare Compassion Group was established by inhabitants in the Kibagare slums. It was registered as a self help group under the ministry of Gender, Sports, Culture and Social services in 1998. At the time of registration the group consisted of 64 women and 2 men all of who lived in the Kibagare ghetto slums. These people had very little themselves but what they did have they shared to help fund the compassion group.

In Kibagare most families share a ten by ten feet single room with the largest family consisting of ten people and the smallest family are single parents of 1-3 children. The majority of people are jobless and those working are casual laborers and small scale farmer’s roadside business (Kiosk) or make and offer illicit brew and prostitution among young girls is prevalent. Prostitutes start as young as 13 and children have been sold as a commodity as young as 3 years old, in many cases for a few shillings, certainly we have heard of a case where a child was sold for £10 (less than $20). The average cost of “a good time” is 500 shillings, about £3.79 ($8).
People survive on food and clothes donations in the good times, starve and the rags become more tattered in the bad. Some have small income generating activities like beadwork, weaving in basketry, briquette making, but these are few in number. Kibagare is a staggering place to visit as it is as if all the unwanted children in the world have all been dumped in one place and then had a fence put round them. I defy anyone to visit and not be affected.

The Kibagare Compassion group undertakes

A Nursery school for AIDS orphaned, Orphans and abandoned children with up to a maximum of 120 children who attend the compassion Nursery school, Baby Nursery and Pre-Unit. Among the above number are 70 orphans.

Scholarship program for those who graduate from pre-unit class by taking them to various primary schools including buying them full uniform as well as paying all the requirements to 121 children. The cost of this scholarship to us is almost negligible, being about £50 ($100). To them it’s a small fortune.

Pre-teen under 14 years by teaching them about early adolescence, child abuse as well as behavior change to 120 children.

Feeding program for both boys and girls for 361 children.

Bead work, making kikois (wrap-around skirts), basketry, briquette making and adult education program to reduce literacy among the community to both men and women. A briquette is a heating brick for cooking made from sawdust and cow manure, hand moulded into rounds and pressed and dried in the scorching sun. It slowly burns but the stench is putrid to western noses, ignored by residents of Kibagare.

Despite the fact that majority of the group have extremely low educational levels; the organization of the group is impressive. Since its foundation, the Kibagare Compassion group has had a clear organizational structure in place which comprises of five women and two men.

During the establishment of the group the initial agreement among the members was to make a contribution of Kshs200 per month, (about £1.30 or $2). The group depended on this personal subscription to maintain it’s activities following consistent contribution. The group managed to save enough money to build a hall in the year 2000, which they later divided into 3 class rooms, baby Nursery and pre-unit. This school is of corrugated tin roof and walls on a timber pole frame and is about 10 yards long and 5 yards deep. Into this space fit 3 classrooms and 120 pupils. The formation of the Kibagare community based Nursery school had been one of the major goals of the group since its conception.

Unfortunately due to economic constraints the members of the Kibagare Compassion group have found it increasingly difficult to raise the monthly contribution and faced with the stark choice of taking their combined earnings to the group or feeding their children the group inevitably choose to feed their own children. Not suprisingly, some members dropped out of the group and 35 members were left. The members of the group have faced financial problems which have hindered the progress of their activities such as income generating project and the school children’s feeding program. In effect the group had to close the Nursery school at the beginning of 2005 because the members could not afford to pay the teacher’s salaries of kshs 7,000 (£50 / $100) each per month. The school was reopened in August 2005 when well wishers intervened and redeemed the project by donating half amount while the group contributes the rest each month.