KALOLENI INTEGRATED ANTI-AIDS COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATION KISUMU, KENYA
KISUMU, KENYA
The Kaloleni Centre is located in Kisumu, a town of 375,000 people located 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%.) Almost 71% of people in the province of Nyanza live below the poverty line (whereas the national average is 52.6%). Moreover, Kisumu is located in the Burkitt’s Lymphoma Belt and the holoendemic (i.e., an endemic of an entire population) Malaria Region.
The Kaloleni Centre is located within one of the worst slum communities in Kisumu. Within the slums of Kaloleni is a population of more than 50,000 people, a fifth of which are children. Of these 10,000 children, 3,000 are orphaned and 1,000 are HIV-positive. Only 400 children are aware of their HIV-positive status and have access to care and treatment at the Patient Support Centre of the Nyanza Provincial General Hospital in Kisumu. There are, therefore, at least 600 children within this community who are not aware of their HIV-positive status, who are not receiving any treatment or support of any kind, and who do not have a parent or guardian to care for them. Many of Kaloleni’s children are subsequently 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, established the Centre to reach out and help the slum community’s most vulnerable population – its orphaned children. The aim of the Centre is "to support and rehabilitate the most vulnerable children of these slums through counselling, education, psychosocial support and HIV/AIDS intervention and prevention programmes, advocating for children’s rights and their general well-being, and thereby allowing these children to grow up to be become responsible persons living within their community, and thus ending the cycle of despair and abuse."
The Kaloleni Centre, although a registered Kayan charity, is only in its earliest stage of development. The Centre has however, been able to reach out to at least 41 children, keeping them off the streets and assisting them through behavioural change counselling and education, basic health and medical care, assisting them to gain access to treatment services at the Patient Support Centre, and advocating for their rights, security and well-being as children of the community. The Kaloleni Centre is still in the process of developing its formal structure and organization, and is severely lacking in any regular funding and access to the most basic essential resources. The following are the Centre’s general initiatives: (i) guidance and counseling both in individual and group settings (although the central focus of the Centre is working with children, the Centre also works with parents and guardians to help educate them on resources available for the children and how to access them), (ii) recreational and sport activities, (iii) behavioural change couselling, (iv) HIV/AIDS awareness and education, (v) education and promotion of life skills and psychosocial development, (vi) promotion and advocacy of children, gender and human rights (with an emphasis on early child development and support), and (vii) resource mobilization and referrals.
Moreover, the Kaloleni Centre promotes 4 distinct programmes: (i) support and counselling services for children who are victims of trauma, abuse, neglect, and are HIV-positive; (ii) coordinating a children’s community club; (iii) home-based care for HIV+ children, providing education, care and resources for both children and their families; and (iv) a children’s community football team focusing on using sport and recreation as a means of psychosocial support.
The Kaloleni Centre further recognizes that in addition to severe psychosocial distress and trauma, these children also suffer from an acute lack of basic nutrition, proper shelter, clothing and health care. Deprived of parental guidance and protection, they themselves become vulnerable to HIV infection. And finally, as in many similar communities, the traditional ways of caring for orphans and vulnerable children, such as the extended family system, are being severely strained by the multiple, mutually exacerbating impacts of HIV/AIDS.
The future of the Kaloleni Centre relies solely on the support of outside sources, such as Project ChildCare Foundation, to fund its various programmes, and provide the necessary resources for its initiatives, thereby providing tangible and sustainable improvements in the lives of these children.