Happy Thanksgiving Day from Nairobi, Kenya

A Thanksgiving Message From Tom O'Hern

No, the picture to the right is not Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck doing research for their latest fair and fearless news broadcast----or is it? (That may have offended half of you---sorry couldn’t resist. Okay it could also be Keith Olberman, I know!) These young, playful pachyderms are enjoying the sun and mud in Nairobi National Park, a huge wild life reserve within the city limits. Your support--financial and otherwise--during the course of this past year has helped Family Hope Charity put a smile and a bit of elephant like playfulness back in the lives a good number of poor Kenyans. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your generous support to FHC.

With your assistance, Family Hope was able to:

• Help 15 slum mothers start, equip and begin operating a day care center in an eastern Nairobi which is currently caring for 40 babies. Without this service the mothers of these infants would not be able to find work each day to feed their children and their babies wouldn’t eat. It is as simple as that.
  


• Build an additional classroom for a nursery school which also serves poor slum families in eastern Nairobi. The new room has allowed this school to double the number of children they serve. The mission of the school is to give slum children the psychological and educational foundation they need to start their primary school on equal footing with children from economically able families.
  


• Put together a volunteer program in collaboration with another charitable organization, which recruits and supports professionally trained Kenyan nurses, lab techs and medical officers and posts them in poor mission hospitals throughout the country. Most of the time the receiving facility is the only medical option available to the poor and needy in a given area.


• Also, Jack Oduor, my Family Hope Charity colleague, was able to organize 400 people into 20 ‘daily savings groups’ in Kuresoi. These ‘daily savings groups’ help poor people pool their meagre resources and enable them to work together to operate income generating activities that would be beyond their individual capabilities.

While the elephants pictured in this letter are not Fox news personalities, it could easily portray the kind of leadership that the big shots in the government of Kenya have been providing for their people during the past two years—namely a prolonged frolic in the muck of corruption. Kenya inaugurated its 4th president on the second to the last day of December 2007. Most Kenyans believed the election was stolen and the swearing in of President Kibaki, under the cover of dark in a private ceremony, triggered two months of chaos throughout the country that left 1300 people dead and 600,000 displaced. Kenya has yet to recover from the shock and horror of those few months. Bitterness and cynicism are a fact of public life these days.

The current political climate in Kenya has influenced the progress of Family Hope Charity projects in two parts of the country. In Kuresoi/Rift Valley, we have to wait and see if there will be a repeat of the violence after a local MP is indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in December. Second, in Kiambiu/Nairobi slum we have wait and see if the local community based organizations we are working with can legally prevent their local city councillor from invalidating their property title deeds and selling off the land to his chronies. The kind of disrespect for the poor that is behind both of these issues is common place in Kenya today.

Those of you who know me know that the slow pace of accomplishment is not something I enjoy. But the evil of corruption has woven its tentacles around just about every human relationship and endeavour in Kenya.

In spite of all this nonsense, here’s what Family Hope Charity is going to do in the upcoming months:

1. Together with my two Kenyan colleagues, we will continue to organize and mentor the 20 daily savings groups in Kuresoi and help them unite into a larger advocacy group that can represent their needs and concerns to government authorities.
   


2. Start a similar ‘daily savings group’ network in Kiambiu/Nairobi.


3. Secure the funding needed to start a building construction and life skills training program for youth living in Kuresoi and Kiambiu. The building construction ‘lessons’ for the trainees will be on-the-job training that focuses on the erection of a BIO-CENTRE. A BIO-CENTRE is a sanitation facility that uses the methane from human waste for cooking and for heating water for bathing.
   


4. Run a training program in peace building and conflict resolution targeting youth and women in Kuresoi who were victims and in some cases perpetrators of the post election violence.
   


5. Conduct some seminars for youth in Kuresoi and Kiambiu on substance abuse since
   alcohol and drugs were a major factor in escalating the violence and destruction of the post election violence.
   


6. Organize and implement two community health projects targeting the needs of the poor:
   
   
   1. Community integration officers who are HIV+ men and women that will be sent
      into the slums and villages with the task of tracking down expectant or young mothers
      who are in danger of passing on the HIV virus to their children. Once identifying
      these mothers and members of their households, the integration officers will
      refer them to medical facilities for proper treatment and care.
   
   
   2. Slum champions who are medically trained Kenyans whose mission will be to go
      into slums like Kiambiu and search for the abandoned and neglected whom no one is
      reaching. Once these elderly, crippled, HIV infected, orphaned, are found the
      champions will put them in contact with health facilities or organizations that can care
      for them.
      

The purpose of everything Family Hope Charity does is to restore dignity, hope and playfulness to poor families whose lives have been undermined by poverty and violence. So again wishing yours and all you know a Happy Thanksgiving.

Keep Family Hope Charity in your prayers and if you can help us with the expenses of these projects please do so. Our fiscal sponsors for tax exempt donations are:

The Staudinger Foundation
c/o Fr. Lou Franz, C.M.
P.O. Box 1208
Flagstaff, AZ 86002

AND

Totus Tuus Ministries
c/o Jim Seghers
17236 St. Gertrude Drive
Covington, LA 70435