Kenya, East Africa Emergency Food Distribution

I look forward to the day when I can write a report stating that we no longer have families needing our help with food distribution and we have finished working with those who have come to us in recent years and have been assisted...... I can dream.

Initially, our food hamper program began as a short-term Band-Aid while we were all trying to grasp the impact of Covid 19 on the elderly, people living with disabilities, single female, and child-headed households. That was two years ago this month!

Sadly, Kenya is still in the midst of the worst prolonged drought in decades.  Rainfall is not meeting the needs of the people living in the northern parts of the country and, like many of the sub-Saharan regions, the cumulative effect of several years of drought has been catastrophic.  Not only is the immediate effect of drought devastating to livestock and livelihoods, but it is now clearly apparent that whole ways of life and culture need to be changed to deal with climate change and future drought.

We have found it necessary to upscale what we had hoped would be an emergency, short-term aid program into an ongoing regular part of our work.  We now need to put full-time, long-term measures in place to deal with the constant influx of families and children fleeing from impossible conditions in the arid lands a few hours north of us.

In addition to our weekly food hamper distribution program in Nakuru County, which we implemented in April 2020, since November 2021 we have partnered with a fellow Kenyan CBO, KiruiKirui 1000Steps to distribute food hampers to families living in the Baringo and Pocot districts to the north of us. These families have been displaced by the ongoing cattle rustling wars. These distributions involve extremely long days, traveling on very rough terrain. For this reason, on these trips, we quadruple the number of food hampers we normally distribute

It's often late into the evening by the time we reach our final distribution point, where we are greeted with singing and rejoicing. Despite the fact that our families have been waiting all day for our arrival, they are very grateful as they report that no other organizations remember them and that they have not received food assistance in the past.

Here at Springs of Hope Foundation, we feel blessed and humbled to have the opportunity to be able to reach as many families as we have in the past two years. We're also so very grateful to you for your continued support of this vital program.

Please help us continue with our mission to feed the elderly, disabled, and needy in Kenya by forwarding this report to your friends and family, sharing it with your social media friends, and inviting them to follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/kijijimission/

Warmest regards,

Jennifer Hughes-Bystrom

Founder/CEO

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