VF and Covid-19 emergency

Dear VF friends,

We wanted to give you a brief update on how Volunteers Foundation is reacting to the Covid-19 epidemic which is spreading in Africa and in Kenya as all over the world.

We have been closely following the advice of the World Health Organisation and the Kenyan health authorities to define and implement measures to best protect children and our local staff.

The local social and economic conditions and poor health infrastructure risk to amplify the impact of the epidemic hitting hard especially the weakest part of the communities, as the people living in Kibera.

Schools in Kenya are now closed, and people have been asked to stay home and to avoid any form of socialization. This creates some additional challenges to the people: our children and their parents must stay home, often sharing an extremely limited space in very poor hygienic conditions, with no ventilation or sun light.

We are monitoring the situation, offering guidance, keep paying wages to all staff and assessing difficult situations. Our teachers are in constant contact with the families, engaging the children with some creative remote learning and providing extra support.

Most of our children’s parents rely on occasional jobs or small businesses and putting food on the table every day is a challenge. Many have not had jobs since the last ten days and whole families are sleeping hungry.

Furthermore, with demand of self-isolate and reducing social contact to prevent the spread of the corona virus especially women and girls are under further risk of domestic violence and mental health of children may be also affected.

Our mission is to help disadvantaged children and young people at times when they need it most.

For this reason, we have also decided to support our children’s families through the delivery of food supply. Every fortnight, each parent is called at school following a spaced timetable and rigid queuing procedures to collect a bag of essentials which will provide basic but critical sustainment to the family of our students.

If you want to support us in this challenging time, please make a donation.