Fighting HIV/AIDS and Poverty
Improving Education and Healthcare
Mobile Clinics
139 Stations visited
6,802 Patients seen
36 Volunteers involved
1local Clinical Officer
1 Doctor
Covered western province and parts of Rift Valley
MDP( Micro-enterprise Development)
26 groups visited, attended business seminars each group comprising approximately 15 members each
6 Volunteers involved with local translators
Covered western Province
Mobile clinics:
147 stations visited
5,277 patients seen
37 medical volunteers from across the world
Covered western province and parts of Rift valley.
Local staff comprised of a clinical officer,pharmacist ,Nurse and translators.
MDP (Micro-enterprise program)
48 stations visited
45 groups attended business seminars, each group comprising a minimum of 15 members
13 MDP volunteers involved
Main projects undertaken by the groups were mainly Micro-lending, horticultural, Dairy and trade in artifacts /tailoring
Covered western province of Kenya.
This fall and winter has been the busiest fall/winter months for us ever. I just got back from Kenya and we were completely filled to capacity on the farm. We had 14 Indiana University students that were staying with us to complete their student teaching assignments. They taught Epico Jahns, our grade school, as well as several other local primary and secondary schools. In addition to the IU teachers, we had 10 of our own regular ICODEI volunteers working in our Healthcare, AIDS, and MDP programs. With 24 people on the farm, we had a very full dinner table in the house each night.
Our Microenterprise Development Program continues to further evolve. This is our newest program that is still undergoing development. I spent my two weeks in Kenya meeting with our network of microenterprise groups to try out various business training seminars. We are in the process of developing a business training manual for MDP volunteers to use in order to give basic business skills training classes to the microenterprise groups. The groups loved learning from these training seminars on basic business topics such as accounting/bookkeeping, marketing, pricing, savings and investment, good business management practices, business planning, etc.
As you have likely seen in the news, Kenya is going through a very difficult and contentious situation right now that resulted from the Presidential election held on December 27, 2007. The results of this election are being contested and it has caused rioting and violence in many parts of Kenya. Therefore, in early January we had to make accommodations for all of our volunteers who were on the ground in Kenya to leave.
Although they were not in any imminent danger, the country was volatile and we did not think it was safe to travel around the country each day to do our programs. We also canceled the trips for the volunteers scheduled to come in January and February. We have put a hold on all our programs on hold until the situation improves and it is safe for volunteers to come and work. Since all of our programs involve daily traveling (using our vehicles) to rural villages in western Kenya, we can’t take the chance of running the programs when the roads may not be safe. However, our grade school Epico Jahns and our clinic are still fully operational. We would have had hundreds of angry parents and a mob of three hundred little school children banging down the school yard fence to get into the classrooms if we tried shutting down the school. Since our clinic and school are staffed by our local team of Kenya teachers, nurses, and doctor, these facilities can still run without the volunteers being present.
It had been four years since my last trip to Kenya, but I was finally able to get back during July and August. The growth and positive changes were amazing. The frustrating things are still frustrating. It’s still hard to believe what has grown out of this chance encounter with Reuben back in 1998. We’ve had over 450 volunteers from 21 different countries: Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Iraq, India, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and the USA. We now have 46 local workers and six international coordinators.
One of my priorities of this trip was to assess the healthcare program, as it has grown tremendously over the past four years. I was able to spend some time on the mobile clinics and get good feedback from volunteers on the ground. I am in the process of finalizing a healthcare program manual that will provide more information for volunteers prior to arrival as well as help with the daily activities on the mobile clinics.