Project title:
SOLOLO
and Obbijtu Children’s Home
Intervention of social promotion and development for underage and
adolescent at-risk orphans in Sololo, Kenya
Country and location: Sololo
District, Kenya
Estimated duration:
Promoting organisation: Associazione Mondeco Onlus
(Muggiò – MI, Italy)
Local counterpart: CIPAD – Cultural Information
Pastoral Development
Address: Sololo
Legal Representative: Gufu G. Guyo
Legal
status: The
Cultural Information Pastoralist
Development (CIPAD) is a Community
Based Organization (CBO), registered by Kenyan law.
The responsibilities and obligations of the
counterpart are the ones set out in the agreement signed on 7th May
2005 with CCM. The end-of-project handover provides that the counterpart takes
responsibility for the services and that the handover shall be performed under
such terms and conditions as will safeguard the social and educational purposes
of the intervention.
·
Organisations involved: Government of Kenya:
§
National Council for
Children’s Services
§
District Commissioner Sololo
District
§
Children’s Officer Moyale
§
District Development Officer
Moyale
§
Division Officer Obbu – Uran
§
Sololo Senior Chief
§
Public Health Officer
Obbu-Uran
§
Community Elders
Other
organisations involved:
Apart
from local and district authorities, the project aims at actively involving the
Women’s Groups and Youth Groups in the Divisions concerned and duly registered
with the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Kenya. Twenty-one
associations have been present in the area since the late 1980s. Some of them focus their activities on the
educational area, youth training, children’s rights, cultural promotion; others
work in the area of breeding and selling cattle, farming, production of
traditional bricks.
The
local health structure, formed of government clinics, the District Hospital of
Moyale and the Sololo Catholic Mission Hospital, will be involved in looking
after children who need medical attention, including the children who have
resulted positive in the voluntarily HIV/AIDS screening.
Regional context
Kenya is categorised as a low income country.
The
per capita gross domestic product is 1600 USD (388 Euro).
The
zone affected by this project is located in the Obbu-Uran Division, one of the
four Divisions of the Moyale District. The District lies in the Eastern
Province in the North of Kenya. The territory of the Moyale District is arid
and semi arid land and in the North features the Ethiopian Highlands at about
700 m/asl and in the South the arid plains at about 550 m/asl. The temperature
ranges from 16° to 45° and the warmest season is between September and March.
The Moyale District population is mainly Borana. The Borana are herdsmen who live in the land
on the border between Kenya and Ethiopia. Approximately 100,000 people live in
the arid northern Kenyan area and 200,000 in Southern Ethiopia. The economy of the Moyale District is based
on cattle breeding. There is no organised trade system. The cattle sold on
the Moyale market have a different value based on their state of health and
therefore on the condition of the pastures. After the fall of the Menghistu
regime in Ethiopia, in January 1999, the borders were closed, with grave
consequences. One of these was the blocked access to the many water sources and
pastures that the herds from Kenya used during periods of drought. The life span in Kenya in 2005 was 49 ½
years for men and almost 48 for women. According to a projection of the Kenyan
Ministry of Health, in 2005, AIDS resulted in more than 2 million orphans in
the whole country. According to some predictions, in 2010 this number could
rise to 2.3 million, so 20% of the total number of children in the country. The
estimated number of orphans in the Moyale District is 1400. The estimated
number of orphans in the city of Sololo alone is 200 in the next two years. In the urban area of Sololo,
HIV/AIDS-positive underage orphans is one of the most urgent and serious
problems. The children live in poor conditions, without resources due to
the disintegration of the family caused by HIV/AIDS related deaths of one or
both parents. These underage orphans are often denuded of their rights, have a
high health and abandonment risk and antisocial behaviour with resulting
problems for the community. In remote and isolated areas like Sololo, the
traditional customs are still very much to the fore and respected, and
according to this the family of a living brother of the deceased is responsible
for their family. If there is no living brother, the grandmother takes care of
her grandchildren. This model guarantees complete protection for the orphans.
In practice, the traditional system of “circulating children, a de facto family
fostering arrangement, is a heartfelt form of assistance existing in the
society system in Kenya. Unfortunately, in a context, like Sololo, of extreme
poverty this traditional system of aid for the orphans will not be able to
handle the exponentially increasing number that will predictably continue to rise
over the next few years. Furthermore, in recent decades, the traditional family
model has also undergone changes caused by the impact of the modern western and
Islamic lifestyle. Apart from the social and economic changes, the stability of
values and traditional models are also under discussion. The traditional
extended and polygamist family is being replaced by the concept of a monogamous
and single-parent family unit, something that was in the past completely
extraneous to the local culture. The bonds inside the clans are becoming weaker
and this cultural conflict between past and present has a negative effective,
causing problems in terms of assistance for children, who are the most
vulnerable group threatened by these changes and imbalances.
In 2001, the Government of Kenya approved
a new law for underage children, the Kenya Children Act, in accordance with
the 1989 New York Convention on Children’s Rights. The Government undertakes
responsibility to assure the survival, care and development of children with
problems through public structures designated for their care. Unfortunately, at
the planning and operative level, a lack of resources means these interventions
are mainly concentrated in urban areas (Children
Act, section 4). In the area of Sololo, the actions of the government
offices responsible for children’s policies are more or less nonexistent. The
intervention policies of the Kenyan Government include the involvement of other
institutions like NGOs, the local community and others, facilitating the search
for and application of solutions for children in need of protection and care.
To come up with a solution to the problem of underage orphans or children at
risk, the local and district authorities in Sololo, together with the
representatives of the elders and government administrators stressed the need
for an intervention that excludes more or less standardized institutional
solutions, which would be very different from the traditional Borana lifestyle.
They request solutions that are in line with their tradition, where underage
orphans are part of an extended family system.
So, the Kenyan law aims at
assuring that these children are reintegrated into the local community and
favours their inclusion in a replacement family group. This project attempts to protect the specific Borana culture by not
imposing models extraneous to the local culture. In particular, the project is
inspired by the traditional Borana lifestyle which up to today has been
conducted in the nomad village called Yaa,
where a group of children selected from the different clans as possible the
future leaders of the Borana Gada system, live together under the care of the
elders – tutors, learning the Borana history and its traditional usages and
customs. (see: “I Borana” by Marco Bassi – publisher Franco Angeli,)
Project:
Sololo Project - Obbijtu Children’s Home
Origins of the initiative
This intervention has arisen
to fill a gap in the interventions specifically targeting underage and
vulnerable orphans in the area of Sololo (and throughout Northern Kenya), and
aims to prevent the “street children”
phenomenon that has already become widespread in nearby townships (Moyale and
Marsabit).
The project responds to an
express request made in 2004 to Dr. Bollini, member of CCM and present in
Sololo as Project Manager by the people of Sololo, through the Senior Chief
Galma Dabasso and fifty members of the Committee of Elders of Sololo, together
with representatives from the Women’s and Youth groups.
On 12th April 2005,
with the authorisation of the government, the Committee of Elders voted to
assign land to build the Obbijtu Children’s Home, a village to house the
coordination centre for the whole project and some residential buildings for
abandoned children. Construction began
on 1st August 2006.
General objective:
The
general objective of this project is to improve
the living conditions of underage and/or vulnerable orphans, particularly
children whose parents died from HIV/AIDS, thus assuring the right the underage
orphan to have a family.
Specific objectives:
The
specific objective is to assure that the
basic needs of orphaned and vulnerable children such as nutrition, healthcare,
primary education are met within and by working with their natural families
(extended family), screening their physical and psychological growth and, where
necessary, housing them (at first no more than 20 children) in the Obbijtu
Children’s Home, an open structure integrated into the local community and
culture.
Problems to solve
During the needs
identification phase, the following problems appeared and need solution:
Although
this project does not claim top solve all the problems that arose during the
needs-identification study (high level of poverty in Sololo, propagation of the
HIV/AIDS virus, single mothers etc…), it can respond to some of the priorities
identified through assistance of the orphaned and vulnerable children and
families who take care of them, day care or residential care for children in
the Obbijtu Children’s Home and training/awareness relating to children’s
problems and rights for the families and staff of the Obbijtu Children’s Home.
The levels of intervention include:
a)
care and assistance for as
many orphaned or vulnerable children between 0 and 12 years old as possible in
their extended or in any case foster families;
b)
the completion of a
residential “village” (Obbijtu Children’s Home), similar to the other nineteen villages composing the present township of
Sololo, to house a limited number of children for whom homecare is impossible.
c)
offer of individual healthcare
and psychological support for each orphaned and/or vulnerable child;
d)
training of staff involved in
the project.
The
strategy and methods used to implement the intervention involve each action
being realised through partnerships with different local partners already
working in similar fields promoting children’s rights and in particular, with
its counterpart C.I.PA.D. (Cultural Information Pastoral Development),
which will coordinate the project activities to promote sustainability at the
conclusion of the programme.
Beneficiaries
Direct beneficiaries
·
Orphaned and vulnerable
children in Sololo (Obbu – Uran Divisions) between 0 and 12 years old who have
no suitable physical and moral care due to the indigent status of the families
or for social and personal reasons.
Indirect beneficiaries of the project are:
·
Families who care for the
children who will be supported by the Project, in fulfilling their duties of
care, custody and education of the children;
·
the local community, through
training and employment of local workers in the project;
·
The local healthcare structure
– the hospital of Sololo and government clinics – will benefit from the
arrangements made for the healthcare of children involved in the project;
·
The local primary school,
which will enjoy the addition of project staff for the education of some
children from the more vulnerable and disadvantaged categories, also from the
educational point of view who live in the new village.
·
The project also offers new
job opportunities for the local population for the building and upkeep of the
new village.
STRATEGIES OF INTERVENTION:
Phase one:
Attention to orphaned and vulnerable children in
families who take them in
The Sololo Project adheres to the UNICEF guidelines set out in the
document “Looking after children suffering from HIV and AIDS”:
Losing both parents to AIDS
has lead to millions of orphans and other children live with sick or dying
family members. The profound trauma of losing one or both parents has devastating
long-term implications, not only for the wellbeing and growth of the child but
also for the stability of some communities.
Children who have lost parents to this pandemic need
PROLONGED CARE to recover their physical and emotional wellness and to fully
realised their potential. Children cannot wait, they cannot postpone the
future. They need immediate attention, healthcare, education and protection, as
well as the opportunity to play and participate in family life.
In October 2005 a new initiative (UNICE and UNAIDS)
was launched: “Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS” as a global Call to
Action with four goals (the four Ps):
1. prevent infection among
adolescents and young people
2. prevent mother-to-child HIV
transmission
3. provide paediatric treatment
for HIV-positive children
4. protect and support orphans
and children affected by HIV and AIDS
The campaign supports the message to make a real
difference in the lives and life chances of children, FOCUSING ON ALL FOUR
AREAS.
The solutions of caring for these children must keep
them in a supportive and helpful family setting that is as close to possible as
their original family. This means KEEPING PARENTS ALIVE and SELF-SUFFICIENT AS
LONG AS POSSIBLE; KEEPING SIBLINGS TOGETHER, or as close to each other as possible;
FAVOURING POSITIVE WELCOME IN THE EXTENDED FAMILY and ENABLING CHILDREN TO
REMAIN THE COMMUNITY THEY PERCEIVE AS HOME.
The MAIN OBJECTIVE of the Sololo project will be to
care for local children in order to keep them as far as possible in their own
social and natural context (the Borana extended family that can give the needy
and abandoned child care and attention again), and only in very few extreme
cases, where it is impossible for the child to develop in a family setting,
will residential or day care facilities in the Obbijtu Children’s Home be
offered.
A
trained technical team formed of staff with skills in the social care field and
a nurse from CCM, will census the families who are looking after these
children, assisting each of them through:
Phase
two:
Opening the Obbijtu Children’s Home village that
can support the following functions:
1)
resource centre for the
problems of children in the Sololo area
2)
management ganglion of the project
3)
day hospitality for children
in the project
4)
hospitality for children in
total state of moral and material abandon, who it is not possible to place with
a traditional family, for no more than 20 children.
The
Village has been constructed to guarantee continuity and adherence to the
usages and customs of the Borana and has been built to improve health
conditions and duration offered by both traditional buildings and by the new
construction models adopted recently in Sololo.
An essential condition of the project is for the
building activities, décor and every activity performed within the Project to
give priority to the residential population both in terms of local business as
well as individual jobs.
The Village is formed of two living units that can host 10 children for
each home. Each home is run by a “mother”, who is the emotional and social
point of reference for the children staying their, with the assistance of at
least two “aunties”, who have excellent pedagogical skills, who work in
managing the project in the territory and at the same time support the “mother”
in the education of the children entrusted to their care.
The “Father of the Village” who will live with his family in his own
compound in the Obijitu Village will supervise the project and the management
of the hospitality of the children.
By looking after the management aspects of the project, the father
becomes the male father-figure for the children staying in the Village and in
particular handles their integration into the traditional culture of the Borana
community, so that the children are socially integrated.
Each compound is formed of a home with two rooms for the children to
sleep in and one for the mother, an outside kitchen in Borana style, a
washroom/bathroom for personal hygiene, a latrine and a kitchen garden.
The Village promotes strengthening the traditional self-sustaining
culture, giving each compound a kitchen garden and encouraging projects to
develop the traditional herding activity, whose presence is essential to be
truly rooted in the Borana culture.
.
The project undertakes to develop actions that
counteract the causes of abandonment of children (sexual exploitation of girls, disintegration
of families, spread of HIV etc…) at their source. To handle the cases of
abandon, there is a possibility that another three compounds will be added to
these two in the Village, and in the future, similar spaces distributed
throughout the 19 villages that now form the township of Sololo. The final
decision is up to the Elders of Sololo and to the father of the Village and
will take place in light of the
experience matured, taking into account the aspects links to problems relating
to the children fitting into the community and to economic sustainability of
the project. Excessive physical growth of the new village could expose it to
the risk of conditioning the life of the township rather than managing to be
encompassed by it.
Thanks to its modular concept, the project can
be repeated in the future in the Moyale district, to reach the number of
abandoned children who it will be necessary to look after from time to time.
In detail, each “home-family-traditional”
compound built on about two and a half hectares, fenced in by local bushes, is
composed as follows:
- A
rectangular house of 5 m x 12 m to be used ad dormitory, completely furnished
and equipped, divided into three rooms, 4 m x 5 m each, with veranda of 2.5 m x 12 m. It is built on load-bearing
concrete pillars that hold up the metal sheet roofing – to collect rainwater –
and curtain wall made from sand-concrete inside and outside plaster, on double
wire spread between the columns.
The home have been constructed by a local
builder (Mt. Abo Contractors) who proved
the feasibility of this technology for the building skills of the local labour.
- A
5000-litre tank to collect the rainwater from the roof on the house and
veranda.
- A
building to be used for cooking, which looks similar to the traditional huts
(round shape made using mud-coated wood and leafy bough roofs). This 4 m
diameter building will also be built using the technology above, but it will be
covered with grass, woven in the local tradition.
- A
similar construction has been built for the washroom and showers.
- Another similar-looking
structure has been built to contain the latrines, prepared for biogas
collection.
- A kitchen garden of
approximately 1 hectare, with the necessary tools to cultivate it and possibly
fenced-in area to keep animals to buy with pastoral development projects.
- The house for the “father of the
village” includes: kitchen, bathroom, dining room and four bedrooms,
traditional outside kitchen and outside latrine.
- The guest home that accommodates
expatriate staff and consultants is composed of a kitchen, dining room and five
bedrooms with bathroom.
Apart from the existing storehouse and generator
room, it is planned to construct a multipurpose/office building in the future.
The pastoral development project involves the
Village being supplied with a small herd of animals under the care of the
“Mothers” and including at least two donkeys, four cows, 10 goats, poultry to
provide milk, eggs and meat for the children and to root them in the
traditional pastoral society.
Other animals will be given to the families of
origin of abandoned children so as to keep a tangible link between the child
and the extended family. The Elders and the local law will guarantee protection
of the animals owned by the children.
In a subsequent phase, the project considers
forming a community herd, entrusted to the father of the Village and composed
of five head of cattle and ten camels for each inhabited compound.
The community herd entrusted to the father,
together with the herd entrusted to the Mothers, form the basic pastoral system
to reproduce the two herds that traditionally compose the “pastoral unit” of
the Boarana village: the “milking herd”, kept near the village, and the “breeding
herd” taken to distant pastures.
a) Identification of personnel to
employ in the Sololo project and in the Obbijtu Children’s Home to care for
children who need care and protection
In the project (Sololo Project and Obbijtu
Children’s Home) the following staff are considered:
-
1 Father of the Village,
resident inside and project supervisor, father-figure for the children housed
in the village;
-
1 Uncle of the village, not resident in the
village, managing homecare and assisting the father in aspects relating to
education of the children housed in the Village;
-
2 “Mothers”, residents in the
Village, responsible for the care of resident children;
-
2 “Aunties”, not resident in
the Village, with social and educational training, for the management of
homecare and daytime hospitality and support for the Mothers in the
educational/school/play field;
-
4 watchmen, with additional
tasks to look after the Village compounds (grass cutting, fence maintenance;
-
Other personnel for related
projects (pastors) in a number to determine, compatible with the degree of
economic sustainability of the Project.
.
The management organisation, CIPAD, after
consulting with the Sololo Elders Committee and the Main Donor (now CCM, in the
future Mondeco) will select the father of the Village.
The Father will report on his work to CIPAD,
which will adopt disciplinary sanctions where necessary, adhering to the
principle of proportionality and gradualism of the sanction, which can arrive
at being removed from the position, but which must always occur within a just
disciplinary system.
CIPAD adopts sanctions by its own initiative or
on request of the Main Donor, which acts following reports it receives from its
own or external control and supervision bodies.
The “Uncle” of the village will be chosen by the
managing organisation, in agreement with the Father of the Village and after
consulting with the Committee of Elders and with the Main Donor.
He reports his work to the Father of the
Village.
The “Mothers” are chosen by the Father of the Village,
after consulting with the Elders.
The “Aunties” are chosen by CIPAD, after
consulting with the Father and the Mothers of the Village.
The watchmen and personnel for subsequent
projects (herdsmen…), will be selected by the Father of the Village.
The duties of each figure employed in the
Project will be defined by the CIPAD together with the Main Donor.
The working relationships between the management
organisation (CIPAD) and the selected personnel will be governed by the laws of
Kenya, and shall involve compliance with the current social security,
healthcare and workplace safety regulations. Membership of unions may not be
prohibited.
b) Training of staff to employ in the Sololo Project
The Project includes training courses for staff.
Training modules will be held before the start
of day and residential hospitality in the Village, and will be followed up by
different refresher courses for each job description.
A common training day for all the staff involved
in the project will be held once a year.
The “mothers” selected will attend a three-month
training course involving at least two months on-the-job training in a suitable
centre.
Ongoing training will involve the staff in at
least two months a year, lasting at least three days.
Other training and follow-up will take place
together with the monitoring and evaluation missions organised by the Main
Donor.
Courses will be held by external consultants
with knowledge of the Borana culture.
Issues covered in the courses to prepare the
mothers to care for and protect the children will be based on the principles of
the Kenya Children’s Act (Part III,
section 23) and will be:
·
personal hygiene;
Particular importance will be placed on the
issue of HIV/AIDS prevention and sexual abuse.
Training of the “watchmen-maintenance men” and
of the “herdsmen” involves, in addition, aspects tied to the technologies and systems
used in the Village.
c) Developing
an individual programme of psychological and sanitary support for each child
admitted to the Project
When
admitted to the Project, each child will be screened and interviewed to assess
their specific psychological needs. The results are recorded on a personal
clinical chart that includes the “individual sanitary and training-educational
care plan”.
Sanitary
programme
The
medical assessment will be performed by a doctor/nurse, an expatriated
consultant, who will write up a clinical chart for each child and will perform
an initial sanitary screening to check the presence of diseases or HIV/AIDS.
The
project staff will submit to a health check-up when they are employed, to be
repeated every six months.
.
The
medical consultant will also provide theoretical and practical First Aid
training to the adults employed in the Project.
.
The
Project guarantees access of the children involved in its activities to
healthcare available at the Sololo Mission Hospital and local government
clinics.
Psychological programme
All the psychological activity
will be managed by the Uncle and the Aunties under the supervision of external
psychologists who are specialists in working with orphaned and vulnerable
children.
The
consultant psychologist will hold individual interviews assisted by the project
staff (Uncle and Aunties), to detect the specific needs of the children, their
relationships with the extended or foster family or, with the Father and Mother
of the Village.
The
consultant psychologist, assisted by Uncle/Aunties, will then draw up an
individual plan to support each child.
One
particular activity of the consultant psychologist will consist of individual
and group meetings to give psychological support and help children overcome any
traumas they suffered through sexual abuse, physical violence, as well as other
emotional trauma caused by abandonment, death etc…
The
consultant psychologist will handle specific update and investigations for
Uncle and Aunties in the project as well as holding workshops for the
Father/Mothers of the Village, which will serve to increase the parenting
skills of the adults who are entrusted with the care of the children, to make
them protagonists of the educational work.
The consultant psychologist
will visit the site normally every four months and stay for about ten days.
Health
chart
A
“health chart” containing the records and data relating to each child’s
physical and psychological condition will be formulated and constantly updated
for each child admitted to the village. This data will be used to draw up a
personal, targeted “care-training-educational plan” that fully integrates the
“Child placement plan” as provided in the Children (Charitable Children’s
Institution’s) Regulations.
Economic and financial
sustainability
Project
running costs are initially covered solely by donations from the private
sector, which will be added to contributions from trusts and public
organisations.
Costs
for food in the Obbijtu Children’s Home will gradually diminish thanks to the
contributions from the kitchen gardens and the milking herd – principle of
self-sustenance and food independence.
By
2011, a detailed strategy to guarantee sustainability of the project will be
drafted.
Some
initiatives have been taken into consideration to date:
·
a guest structure to include
Sololo in the international circuits of eco-friendly and responsible tourism”-
·
use biological waste of the
guests in the Obbijtu Children’s Home and the animals to produce biogas.