Upendo Centre, KENYA 10/05

A parish centre for vulnerable children in a poor Nairobi neighbourhood is attending to a growing number of orphans who have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.

 The Upendo ('love' in Swahili) centre is run by St Joseph the Worker Parish in Kangemi, a slum settlement on the western outskirts of Nairobi which is home to at least 100,000 people. The centre provides education and care to street children, orphans, and children who are neglected or at risk of abuse.

 The parish launched the Upendo project in 1995 because there was a "vacuum of services for children" in Kangemi. The settlement suffers from an overall neglect in provision of government services, and it is plagued by social ills including unemployment, alcoholism and domestic violence.

 In a project evaluation undertaken in 2004, the parish found an "increasing number of orphans due in particular to the spread of HIV/AIDS," which also left single parents in its wake, too weak to meet their families' basic needs.

 "This project has quickly become a HIV/AIDS programme. Virtually all our children - nearly 200 - are AIDS-affected. Their parents or guardians tend to have AIDS, and a handful of parents die of AIDS each year," says parish pastor, Gerry Whelan SJ. "We have also had some children die of AIDS in recent years. Being affected, if not infected, by AIDS is a reality throughout our parish."

 The Small Christian Communities of the Parish select the children to participate in Upendo. The programme believes that education "is the right way of eradicating poverty and forming children for life" and focuses on preparing them for primary school. Apart from text-book learning, children enjoy theatre, music, poetry, and physical education. When children go to primary school, Upendo sponsors their academic progress.

 Another crucial service is to provide daily meals. "We discovered that for many children, the school is the only opportunity for a meal, so we offer them a breakfast of porridge every morning and cook meat for them once a week."

 Last year's evaluation revealed that Upendo children usually perform well at school. "Although the children remain in the slum, often with highly inadequate parents or guardians," Says Fr Whelan with obvious pride, "we find them doing better than the national average in primary school exams. The Upendo programme is a success story in our efforts at socio-economic development, and Upendo children are our great joy. They become very happy with comparatively so little."

 Encouraging as they are, the children's educational achievements are far from the only fruit of the Upendo project. "We often find Upendo children to be models of ethical behaviour as they grow older," continues Fr Whelan. "Essentially, we add the love they need, together with enough material assistance for them to grow into healthy and self-reliant adults."

 A key strength of the Upendo project is that it forms part of an extensive parish network of social services managed by the St Joseph Development Programme. Ultimately, all pastoral and socio-economic services focus on AIDS as a top priority, making for a holistic response to the needs of people living with the virus. In practise this may mean, for example, assisting parents of Upendo children through the HIV support group or the parish savings cooperative.

 "HIV/AIDS is the key cross-cutting issue of all our activities. Responding is a question for the whole parish," concludes Fr Whelan. "We really believe the situation of the poor is the responsibility of all; this is the reason for the involvement of the Catholic community in caring for poor children and their families."

 Contact: Gerry Whelan SJ <gerry@sjeafr.org>

 Kamau's Story

 Kamau was an Upendo child. He was also an altar boy in the Parish. In fact, when not in the Upendo unit, he seemed to live in the parish compound. The truth was that he did not have much of a home to return to. His mother was a prostitute and an alcoholic. Kamau finished primary school and did moderately well. For some time Upendo did not have the funds to send him to secondary school. Kamau spent two years delivering cartons of milk by bicycle to roadside stores in Kangemi.

The small altar boy was now about 14, growing rapidly and approaching a skinny six feet. Kamau spent all the money he earned supporting his mother, brother and two sisters. Eventually his mother was able to leave her life of prostitution. More recently we found a donor who has been able to set Kamau's mother up in a vegetable selling business and to send Kamau back to secondary school.