Harrison and Joseph are in Kabaa High School, Ann Wangui in Karoti Girls High School, Antony in Katoloni High School, Samuel in Njega Secondary school and Millicent in Gikindu secondary school. They all reported to schools on time. We have had an opportunity to visit them and see how they are coping. They are all well and they seem happy. The only challenge faced and was expected is financial management of their pocket money this we hope to help them learn through individual talks and more practical experiences during the school breaks.

They will all be breaking for their mid-term in different dates from next week to mid March and will get a few days at home. They are looking forward to coming for mid-term and so are the rest of the children who will get a chance to hear how different it is in high school.

Caroline will join Pendekezo  letu, a girl child empowering organization in March, for a period of  nine months for a vocational training. She will  be trained on beauty and hairdressing and she will learn life skills which will help her build her self esteem and prepare her to cope  beyond Macheo. Why she will attend Pendekezo Letu is the exposure to learning beyond only the saloon but also life skills that would empower her general life like, reproductive health, child rights, assertive training that will go a long way into molding her. Currently, Caroline is joined a beauty and hair saloon to get the exposure before her training.

Well, we all have a different meaning of love. Some express it from an angle of receiving while others from an angle of giving. Which ever way you look at it, Love is the only feeling that you cannot describe unless you have felt it and the only language in the world that is unspoken but shared by many different people.

This year I wanted to not only just celebrate Valentine differently but also to share with my friends a new way of what valentines means to us and try to pose a challenge.

Faith Mbeke was a bright standard two pupil at Ndoyo Coffee Primary School. Mbeke has not been attending school. Before Mbeke got sick, the mother got married and they relocated and Mbeke had to transfer to another school. The grandmother however, got to learn that Mbeke was left alone in the house-neglected by the mother, was unwell and had not been attending school.

Disturbed, Mbeke’s grandmother went for her. Mbeke could not walk, her legs were thin and they had wounds. Her grandmother has been taking her to dispensaries and has not been able to afford to take Mbeke for further treatment which she is in much need of. When our social workers went to visit Mbeke, they noticed a hole in her lower back with hair. Mbeke is in dire need of medical attention for her to resume to school and walk again. Together with her grandmother, they are living in poverty.

My challenge this valentine is to share love with the less fortunate. Share what you can with Mbeki and her grandmother, you will not only help her walk and play with her age-mates again but get education that could shape her future.

Love, I have read, is a choice. But I believe if love comes from appreciating goodness, it needn’t just happen ― you can make it happen. Love is active. You can create it. Just focus on the good in another person (and everyone has some). If you can do this easily, you’ll love easily. We love you, share love this valentine with a smile and by giving to someone in need by making a donation.

Enjoy valentine, enjoy love, and enjoy giving. “Happy Valentine”

Be Faith Mbeke’s valentine by making a donation towards her family, contact us.

Meet Ochieng who has married three wives and already has many children with them. We visited one of his wives who just 2 months ago gave birth to twins. She does not work at the momebt and is fully dependent on Ochieng. She can hardly eat as she is stressed thus affecting the children who require to be breastfed and she cannot produce any milk.

This family is one of many families our field workers encounter on a daily basis, who do not only benefit from the tailored-made programs but also from much needed information and knowledge. Watch the video and get to spend a day with our fieldworkers as they give information to one such family.

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On this website you can find more information on our family empowerment programme or our other projects.

Njeri’s father was married before but later abandoned his first wife and children in the Maasai land. Many years later, he realized he was getting old (now over 70 years) and decided to remarry a woman with children. He got married to Njeri’s mother with whom (and the children) they settled in Kiandutu slums in Thika.  He never took the children to school since he did not want to incure any costs other than providing food to his family. According to him, he believed that his work was only to provide food to his family. This meant that Njeri and her siblings would not access a much needed basic right of education.

Through Macheo’s social workers under the Education Empowerment program, Njeri and 11 other children were taken into the program. The program seeks to give opportunities to children who have never been to school. These children get a chance to study and attain the minimum level required of education that would enable them get reintegrated to the regular public primary schools, and study just like the other children.

The program involves intensive individual training to help them get to the same level of at least class one or two in the regular schools. At the same time, the teacher and social workers also work closely with the guardians since most of them are not educated and do not understand why their children should be get education.

This program in Macheo is intend to;

• Identify children who have missed the chance of being in school
• Prepare these children for a chance to join regular public schools
• Reintegrate them into the regular public schools normal
• Provide lunch and uniform so that they have the required needs while in school
• Provide psychosocial support to help them cope with some of the challenges they have faced before.
• Work with the parents/guardians, community, schools teachers, government and other stakeholders to ensure that all children enjoy the right to be in school.

Njeri is very happy to have such an opportunity. The teacher is giving her extra attention since in her case; she has never had even a single day in school in her life. She is very motivated and yearning to get education which she believes will transform her life and that of her family. Under normal circumstances, Njeri is supposed to be in class 6 like other children of her age. This however, does not to dampen her drive to acquire education.

Njeri is among many children in Kiandutu and other urban slums in Kenya who miss out on a chance to be educated. Due to poor social economic status, the guardians do not fully understand the need for education and they end up depriving their own children the opportunity. We have found that these children often take the role of the guardians, some are victims of child labour and neglect, some baby-sit their siblings.  Many others are victims to different retrogressive cultural practices.

To reach more of such children and commence a journey of transforming their lives, Macheo’s invites you to join hands. Check out more on this and other programs of Macheo in the projects section on our website.

The office space was becoming far too small for the amount of people working there and thus affecting privacy, which is much needed, for specific programs.  In the new situation we have four private rooms and two open offices, instead of two rooms and an open office space. The individual offices will be used by the Director,-Marnix, the accounts office-Simon and Julie, the children’s home social workers-Grace, Esther, Benson and Solomon, and finally the outreach-Joan and Faith. All the programs will get representation in every office. The rest of the employees will occupy the open offices.

The new office space will especially benefit the social workers. Grace shared with us the need for more privacy. There is now more room available to share information and have discussions on the children in a private setting. Another important fact is that this will give the children more confidence to visit the social workers office directly, without any worries on their privacy.In the past there were incidences where children would shy off.

We would like to thank everyone who made this possible for us. This will go a long way in improving the way things are done all for the future of Macheo Children’s Centre.  Some of other benefits, just to name a few, will be;

• Our daily planning will be easier as the new setting allows people from our different programs and projects to work closely together
• A better team spirit as working closely together will allow more interaction in better settings
• The work-flow will be much better since people working together are closely linked with each other
• There is now room for creativity and to brainstorming ideas
• There will be room for volunteers to work who come and share their experience and information with us

We are assured of a better 2012 where we move close into achieving our vision and our goals. Join us this year and share something we do with people around you.

The education program is beyond getting a meal a day. I have met countless children in the streets missing an opportunity to enjoy the free primary education, play with children their age, or maybe that they are too hungry to concentrate in school. It is an opportunity for a boy or a girl to get a balanced diet thus is in good health, for a child to play with other children, and opportunity to for a child to achieve his/ her dreams amidst all other challenges.

A lot has been put in place to make this program a success. It has it’s challenges and that is why this year there has been several meetings to ensure that all goes on smoothly through the year. We would like to appreciate our donors for their donation, the children, the school administration, and the cooks among others.

Just to share some of the preparation underway……….

There are several meetings which are aimed at making the foundation of this program this year even better. The preparations include; making note of performance indicators, the activities involved, chances and impact of risks that could occur and the control measures that could see us ensure the beneficiaries get a balanced meal. A new way of working with our suppliers with new forms introduced. And on the ground, an auditor who will visit all the schools at random and check whether or not the children are eating the right quantity. Having someone on the ground will see us work on many challenges or risks that could arise. There will also be a feedback form for the cooks to ensure that they are cooking the right amounts of meal, there is cooperation from the school administration.

We will benefit from savings made from energy-saving-jikos bought for the 14 schools that previously used too much firewood. This will also benefit the cooks who in the past had to cook with wood which was sometimes wet thus they inhaled a lot of smoke. The rural schools will also benefit from Bio-sand water filters that purify the water and the children can finally enjoy clean water in their schools.

The manager, Faith has been busy visiting the school to adjust the annual contracts while at the same time meeting the parents. The turn out, as faith has put it, was average for the four schools visited late this week. Since most of these parents have to work with a big number of them being casual labours who depend fully on what they earn during everyday day worked, we understood. She had a chance to speak to the parents and encourage them to contribute towards their children getting a balanced meal in school thus avoiding so many dangers the children would face if they were to leave the school to go and buy lunch or borrow from others.

To get more information on the education program, visit our website.

• serve over 1,500,000 balanced meals to needy children;
• provide high-quality individual care to the 93 children depending on Macheo Children’s Home;
• assist 30 needy children, mostly girls, with sponsoring their education;
• have a lasting positive impact on more than 200 families through our family empowerment program;
• assist over 700 children in dealing with their trauma’s through our psychological health program;
• offer individual treatment, home-based care and mother-child healthcare to many needy families in Kiandutu slum;
• assist over 150 malnourished children with special meals and training for their caregivers;
• assist 2,000 girls with sanitary pads;
• deworm 30,000 needy children.

Macheo’s staff is ready for 2012. Together with our donors, volunteers and other well-wishers we hope to have the biggest possible impact on the children around us who need our help so much!

Tension was high, fingers crossed and small secret prayers said; as they waited for the Honorable Minister of Education Sam Ongeri to release the exams in what seemed to be a very long speech for them. Harrison, Antony, Joseph and Samuel are among the four the candidates’ left behind in Macheo as the rest had left to celebrate their holiday. The four were left behind since they had just gone through the rite of passage (circumcised).

Harrison was the first in the office, patiently waiting to see his results but forced to wait by the slow internet connection and jamming of the website. He seemed anxious and confident at the same time, moving from one computer to another, from one aunt to another uncle trying to get everyone to check his results on the internet. When he finally got the results, he couldn’t help but laugh and shout with joy, everyone else in the office was shouting with joy as they all clapped.

To cut the long beautiful story short, our 7 candidates’ who are among the 775,820 national wide candidates’ performed very well. Harrison was the top candidate among those in Macheo with 355 marks, Joseph closely behind with 352 marks, Ann Wangui with 330 marks, Samuel with 316 marks, Antony with 307 marks, Millicent with 277 marks and finally Caroline with 122 marks; all out of a possible 500 marks.
There are 2 among our candidates’ I must say something about. Anthony went through the 8 year primary course in only 6 years. He had skip class 2 and in class 7, his age and the fact that he was bigger than other children being the major factors. This saw Macheo intervene and beg the school for him to move between classes something they do not normally allow. We are very proud of Antony who scored 307 marks out of 500 marks. The other one is Caroline who due to advanced age also had to skip some classes. She was not fully motivated to go through the entire 8 year course so she moved from class 5 to class 8 and still managed to get 122 marks out of 500 marks.
We now have to wait for the secondary schools admissions to know that kind of schools they will be admitted to. To all who have supported these children this far, we truly appreciate you. Thank you. We are sure that they will all get very good schools. We will keep you posted on their progress.

Actually, it’s not night and silent is not the right word to use! The children are celebrating Christmas with an afternoon full of cheerful Christmas activities. Christmas is celebrated with all the right things: a Christmas play, praying, a Christmas choir, diner (everybody likes the goat!) and a real life Santa (although he is a bit small). The actual Christmas celebration at Macheo was already done halfway December, because the children go to visit family members during Christmas.

They are all exited about this period. The children love Christmas, all the Christmas songs on the radio are welcomed with enthusiasm, even the shy kids sing along! A few days after the Christmas celebration the children receive Christmas presents. They are all running around and looking at each others presents: what did everybody get?! Can we play together with the toys?

Merry Christmas everybody! Or as they say in Kenya:  Krismasi njema!