Double Your Donation! - Nairobi Slum School Dropouts Appeal
For every £10 you give, we receive £20 (£25 if Gift Aided)!
All donations we receive for our Slum School Drop-Out Appeal will be doubled by a kind and generous Christian funder until May 6th 2025. So for every £10 you donate, we receive £20, £25 with Gift Aid!
Your donation will help fund trauma care and a ‘restorative education’ for children like 8-year-old Mercy*, who hasn’t been in a classroom for 3 years. Her widowed mum is so poor that Mercy and her siblings spend most days begging in the vast slums of Nairobi.
Mercy’s mum, Ruth*, was raised on the streets and married by age 12. She had six children but was made destitute by her in-laws when her husband died – they saw her as “cursed” because she was raised on the streets. They even took all of her possessions.
Mercy has not only lost her dad and her home, she now lives in an abject slum shelter, no longer able to go to school because she has to beg all day in order to survive. It has been devastating for her.
As with many children in the slums, such trauma means that her brain struggles to operate in a ‘rational’ mode. So even as we work to get her back into school, we also need to provide her with specialist therapy, or else she simply won’t be able to thrive there.
*Names changed to protect privacy
Here's what your donation can do
If you give £25 (doubled to £50)
Your donation will help fund a "Back to School" package
Getting kids back into school is a key part of the project. Your donation will fund new shoes, a back pack, school books and a school uniform. Not being able to afford these is a key reason why children drop out of school, so your kindness will have a big impact.
If you give £50 (doubled to £100)
Your donation will enable us to provide livelihood support to a vulnerable families
Empowering vulnerable families (usually an impoverished single mum) in a livelihood means that they will be able to afford school fees and better care for their children without needing our help or anyone else's.
If you give £100 (doubled to £200)
Your donation will help fund therapy for a year for a traumatised child
All of the children at our Hope Centre receive special trauma care, but there are some like Mercy who need additional interventions and focus, given the amount of trauma she has suffered. Your donation will enable us to do this.
Over 2.5 million people live in the slums of Nairobi, the largest slum network in Africa. Crammed in squalid housing, most live in extreme poverty and unimaginable living conditions.
Many live with HIV and most lack access to basic services such as electricity and water (50 households share one non-flushing toilet).
Drug and alcohol abuse are widespread, typically as a means to ‘numb’ life or quell hunger pains. Nearly 65% of families are led by single mothers, many teenagers. School drop-out rates are high.
Our pilot project here in 2023 showed that there are high levels of trauma, both amongst the children and their mums.
Set in the heart of these slums, our Community Hope Centre cares for some of the slum’s most vulnerable children, typically school drop-outs referred to us by partner schools and churches, who we have trained in how to identify signs of trauma in a child.
Here the children and their parents receive a lot of love, specialist trauma care, Bible classes, life skills, education support, as well as take part in fun activities. In some cases we pay the school fees for a limited period, as we work hard to strengthen the family so when they leave our care, they are empowered to support the rest of the child’s education.
Kids Alive is dedicated to providing holistic care for traumatised children and their families, referred to us by local schools, authorities, and churches. Our services include trauma care along with spiritual support, strengthening families, and offering help with livelihood and education.
We also empower local partners and church leaders by training them in trauma care and safe child practices, so they can share their knowledge with others. Additionally, we offer parental support through engaging church workshops and events, and we provide trauma care training for teachers in our partner schools, featuring interactive workshops. We strive to remove barriers to school attendance by assisting with fees, transportation, and creating homework clubs. Moreover, we focus on training and advocating with local authorities to provide the best care for children living in slums and to help them train others effectively.
Your support of our Hope Centre project also enables us to work with partner schools and churches to identify and refer some of the most traumatised children to us, like Mercy. Not only that, but how to change attitutudes towards traumatised children in the slums, andto know how to differentiate between ‘naughtiness’ and behaviour emanating out of trauma.
Crucially, your support will enable us to integrate Mercy and her family into a local partner church. “We believe that when the child and their family has a relationship with God, they will have hope that they can go for what they want in life and will be equipped to thrive in the difficult environment they’re in” Nicholas Oyuga, Project Manager.
It may seem overwhelming at times, but our vision is to transform Nairobi’s slum dwellings into Christ-centred and loving (trauma-free) family environments for the most vulnerable children and adolescents, especially school dropouts. It is often in the darkest of places that God shines the brightest. Thank you for any support you can give, we really do appreciate it.
"Hunger, abuse, or abandonment that occurred months or years ago can still trigger terror, which in turn leads to out-of-control behaviour.” Dr. Karin Purvis, Child Trauma Expert
Here are a pair of shoes and socks worn by one of the children who was referred to us. These are fairly typical for the children we work with – the shoes must have been about 4 sizes too small!
Thank you for your kindness and compassion.
Your donation, no matter the size, will truly make a difference!
“Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.” Psalm 82:3
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