COVID-19 Response Update October 2020
October 2020
It is six months since our community response to the COVID-19 pandemic began. Nasio is the only charity supporting these vulnerable and marginalised Mumias and Musanda communities.
Our team have been working tirelessly with the Kenyan Ministry of Health and Government to fill a critical gap in the provision of essential services including healthcare, clean water and sanitation. Thanks to our immediate response these rural communities have benefited from these essential services and COVID-19 sensitisation information which has helped protect and save lives. It’s clear to see the significant difference this support has made to this marginalised community.
Thanks to your generous support we have:
- Partnered in our emergency response with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Water and Sanitization engaging 340 Community Health Volunteers, raising awareness of Covid symptoms, testing, treatment and prevention.
- Directly reached and sensitised over 50,000 people with a door-to-door COVID-19 sensitisation campaign and set up hand washing stations across Mumias West market centres with information translated into local languages emphasizing the importance of hand washing.
- Involved over 700 young people, 100 Peer Educators and 60 Nasio staff in the campaign implementation.
- Donated over 100 hand washing facilities to families, public spaces, small businesses, churches, mosques and slum dwellers and provided soap and sanitizers.
- Managed production and distribution of 2,362 homemade washable face masks made by local tailors who are earning an income to support their families.
- Trained 514 farmers and our 181 guardians to make ‘tippy taps’ from re-usable containers, making sure they maintained a critical food supply for their families as they continue to farm safely despite the pandemic.
- Donated 2,500 face visors to local health facilities, thanks to the generous support of the Daymark Foundation and Covid Print Oxford.
- Supported 400 flood victims with emergency food, clothing, blankets and mattresses.
- Screened over 6,500 for COVID-19 symptoms at our medical centre and taught hand washing techniques.
- Seen up to a 90% reduction in waterborne diseases in our medical centre due to the sustained hygiene focus.
- Installed 47 wooden dish racks for families to dry their dishes hygienically in the sun to help reduce bacterial and viral diseases.
- Served over 5,600 meals to around 200 children every week with our vital feeding programme at our two day care centres: Noah’s Ark and St Irene’s.
- And so far this year our medical centre, continuing throughout the pandemic period, has treated over 8,000 patients and we have delivered 347 babies including four sets of twins!
We continue to lead the charge on mass screening efforts at our medical centre in coordination with the Ministry of Health’s Community Health Volunteer force making sure communities stay safe.
From the front lines:
Meet Spacious, a social worker at St Irene’s Educational Centre. Throughout the pandemic she has continued visiting our beneficiaries to ensure they get treatment at our medical centre when they are ill. She has also identified what each family needs at this critical time and distributed food parcels to the most vulnerable families. So far this year she has made over 195 home visits.
Spacious plays a crucial role in the community providing guidance and counselling to our children and families with the challenges they are facing
“I feel happy with the job I do on following up on our children and making sure that they feel love, protected and cared for by us. I am so grateful that our children and their families are safe.”
As Spacious knows all too well, the impacts of the pandemic extends further than public health. The severe economic and social impacts have put even more pressure on an already poverty-stricken area of western Kenya. The closure of schools especially is increasing the risk of early teenage pregnancy, abuse, malnutrition and poor mental health among our children.
We are determined to use these challenging times to build life skills and resilience in our young people. We are currently engaging the children in a variety of life skills activities including:
- Tailoring
- Bicycle repair
- IT computer classes
- Piano lessons
- Chess clubs
- Young Farmers Clubs
- Sexual reproductive health classes
The positive effects of these valuable life skills will increase resilience to economic shock such as with the COVID-19 pandemic.
83 young people, from age 10, are engaged in our Young Farmers Clubs learning how to start a kitchen garden and helping provide food for their families.
Youths are working alongside our spirulina team to learn how to cultivate and produce this nutritional super food.
Our tailoring workshops are especially popular with over 50 students, both young and old, each week. Students are making clothes, masks and sanitary towels.
This is John. He’s only 10 and is incredibly proud of this first item he’s made.
We also have young people learning bike repair skills in our new bicycle repair workshop. They are enjoying gaining skills in an area which interests them as well as saving money now that they can now repair their bikes themselves. The rest of the children are also benefiting from the number of well-maintained bikes to develop their motor skills.
The children also keeping their problem-solving and critical thinking skills sharp by playing card and board games like chess. Music and drama sessions are also very popular.
Groups of young people are rising to the challenges of debating to build their confidence and improve their public speaking skills.
Debating topics such as: “Girl child has been given more opportunities than the boys” also helps increase awareness among all our young people of gender issues.
We are very grateful for your financial support during this challenging time which has helped to save, protect and rebuild lives in our communities.
Our work would not be possible without your continued support – thank you!
Asante sana! Thank you so much!
This story is listed in: Coronavirus
