KALOLENI

The Kaloleni Integrated Anti-AIDS Community-Based Centre

KIACOB (Kisumu, Kenya)

The Kaloleni Centre was established in Kisumu, a city of 375,000 people in Kenya's Nyanza Province. The average life expectancy in Nyanza province is 47.7 years (compared to 64 years in the Central Province) and the national infant mortality rate is 78/1000 births. More than 27% of people in Kisumu are HIV-positive (compared to the national average of 6.7%.) 71% of people in the province of Nyanza live below the poverty line.

The Kaloleni Centre was established in one of the poorest slum communities of Kisumu. More than 50,000 people reside in these slums, a fifth of which are children. Of these 10,000 children, 3,000 are orphaned and 1,000 are HIV-positive. Only 400 children have access to care and treatment at the General Hospital in Kisumu. Many of Kaloleni's children are subject to sexual, physical and emotional abuses, severe malnutrition, neglect and abandonment, and often forced into a life of child prostitution and child labour.

Joseph Thuku, the founder and director of the Kaloleni Centre, created the Centre to reach out to the slum community's most vulnerable population - its orphaned children. The Centre helped to rehabilitate the children of these slums through counselling, education, psychosocial support and HIV/AIDS intervention and prevention. Kaloleni's programs further assisted these children in becoming responsible members of the community, with the ultimate goal of ending the cycle of despair and abuse.

Regrettably, due to continued civil instability and unrest in the region, this program has been indefinitely suspended. While operational, the Kaloleni Centre successfully supported more than 100 children - keeping them off of the streets and assisting them with behavioural change counselling and education, basic health and medical care, and advocating for their rights and well-being.