Sorry for the quiet in the past few months. We have been crazy doing all the boring but necessary things that are needed to do things properly: Trips downtown to get the revenue PIN number, numerous trips to the bank and the NGO Bureau to add signatories, hours writing employment manuals, policies, standards for practice, trying to recruit a country director (post is still vacant, if anyone is interested) editing memorandums of understanding etcetera etcetera. None of it makes interesting reading for a blog!
However I am pleased to say that our Day Care venture has started. We are into week three and have high hopes that it will be a great support for mothers in the slums who have to work to feed their families. For those of you who haven't read the previous blog; malnutrition in the slums is rising as food prices rise. One group of children that are really suffering is the six months to three year age group. This is because the mothers have to go to look for work to feed their family and often leave their pre-school child or children in woefully inadequate situations. This can either be in 'daycare' which is often just a tiny room with one woman watching as many as 20 children or sometimes they just lock their babies in the houses alone.
The venture is in partnership with three other groups: There has always been a day care facility at this site and it has been run by Mathare Mothers Development Centre (MMDC) which is supported by the umbrella organisation GROOTS (www.groots.org). The third group is two highly motivated women who have founded 'Tiny Totos' an organisation whose ultimate aim is to open low cost, standardised child care for families growing up in informal settlements (www.tinytotos.org 'Toto' is slang swahili for 'child'). GROOTS and Tiny Totos are very keen for the project to be sustainable, so the mamas have to pay something small. If they don’t, they might just drop the kids off at day care and go back to bed…. Tempting I’m sure for all of us, but doesn’t really encourage these families to stand on their own two feet.
We are running the venture as a pilot to see what works and what doesn’t. We all hope that offering good quality day care with supplemented nutrition will appeal to mothers and they will send their babies to Tiny Totos and avoid the danger and neglect of informal day care. But with the slum community it is always hard to know.
Our first days have had a few hiccups: In the middle of our food hygiene lesson we were visited by a rat, just happily walking around on a ledge in the kitchen. The fortified porridge still hasn't arrived from the government, water has been scarce in the area and therefor jerry cans are expensive...... All part of the learning experience.
Before Tushinde and the partnership became involved the children had only one day care worker, no food and no activities. Now, there is fortified porridge every morning four childcare workers and different activities every day. We are aware that there is a lot more work to be done with training of staff, setting up of procedures and standards for good practice, but just go into the centre with two tables, a pile of office scrap paper and some half used crayons creates a great response from the children.
I have toys (bags and bags of them). But there is a feeling by all the other groups involved that if we drown MMDC in donations, it reduces their sense of ownership and subsequent community involvement. It is more important that we make toys and use local materials. So the children have the crayons, empty bottle shakers, a football made of plastic bags and their voices to keep them entertained.
As to Peter, the boy that inspired this whole venture: He is much better; smiling, pulling himself up and slowly putting on weight. He is not quite well enough to start on the ARVs, but it shouldn't be long now and then we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
