Help 106 Children w/Disabilities THRIVE Kenya

This report is based in a quarterly basis and is meant to outline the progress in the last quarter in different departments in the organization. It will outline the welfare of the children and milestones achieved with the services offered, state the challenges faced and recommendations so far and finally acknowledging GlobalGiving funding and how well it has been utilized to expand our vision and empower children with special needs.

COVID-19 Update

Our organization suffered a big blow at the onset of the pandemic, since most of the support comes from friends and wellwishers of the organization. The guidelines laid by the ministry of health made it impossible for visits in the institution. Dealing with children with special needs meant extra precautions taken to avoid any cases among the children. This affected some of the non residential caregivers working in the organization. This also meant increasing space in our facility to avoid congestion among the children. Food and proper diet for the children was also a need, as well as working more on our suistainable project to reduce overliance on donor support.

Organization Update

In recent months we have focused on four areas, which are as follows:

• Physiotherapy and rehabilitation
• Education
• Medical health
• Sustainable projects

Physitherapy and rehabilitation – We have worked on delivering quality services to our children and within the last four months it has been noted an upward progression. Children are responding well to physiotherapy sessions. We have 46 children with cerebral palsy conditions who routinely require physiotherapy services, and we have increased on the number of sessions attended by each child per week. We have also incorperated caregivers working together with the occupational therapist in different activities to improve their posture sitting position and many more. At least  2 out of 5 children are learning to walk using aids.

Education -  We were able to adopt a special need curricular and among the programs offered are: activities of daily living, communication skills, phychosocial and psychomotor activities, religious education, behavioural modification and vocational trainings. For the last four months we have noted many improvements on the children, with our main aim being for them to achieve self dependence. A big number of children are acquiring the nessesary skills of daily living. A number of children are benefiting from vocational trainings and acquiring impressive skills in knitting and beadwork.

Medical health - We have been able to get the daily medication drugs on time, and the children's adherence to medication is quite good. There have been a reduced number of convulsions among many children suffering such conditions, and there has been reduced transmission of opportunistic diseasses among the children. We have worked to improve their diet with the addition of foods rich in calcium and phosphorus.

Sustainable projects - The recently introduced water project is growing and proving to be a fruitful venture for the organization now and in the future. We have piped water to the nearby households and also sell to others. In the dairy project, the number of cows being milked has increased to 5 cows producing an average of around 50 litres of milk per day. This means there is enough for the children. Through the poultry project we are now able to have the children eat eggs at least once a week.

As you can see, with the funding provided through GlobalGiving, we have been able to improve on the quality of services offered to our children and improve their welfare. The boost of our suistainable projects has enabled rapid growth and we are overseeng a potential for them to be able to suistain their running cost and the surplus dedicated to diferent areas in our budget for the organization. We appreciate and acknowledge the opportunity that we have working with donors through GlobalGiving. We have really benefited a lot with the funding. Thank you for what you have done, what you do and for all our future engagements as we work to empower children with special needs.