Kenya

Karundas Children's Home

The Karundas Children’s Home, about three hours north of the capital city of Nairobi, is a 50-acre farm where approximately 70 children between the ages of 3 and 18 years live. The Homes include:

• The House of Joy was originally designed as a home for abandoned babies – a situation that is common due to the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, which leads many parents to leave their newborns at hospitals or other public places so they might be better cared for.

• Rebecca Home was established as a home for HIV-infected and affected children. Many adults in Kenya have died as a result of HIV/AIDS, leaving children in the care of their grandparents. But grandparents often don’t have the means to provide for these children, so Rebecca Home takes them in and gives them love, food, education and medical care – including a successful anti-retroviral therapy for the HIV-infected children.

• The House of Deborah was established to meet the needs of vulnerable girls from surrounding communities who are faced with many cultural and social challenges, including forced/early marriage, sexual abuse, neglect, and school drop out.

The Hall Mead School

The Hall Mead School: The former stables at the Karundas Center were renovated into a school in 2006 by a group of young people from Hall Mead School in England, so the school was named in their honor. The school provides nursery and primary school education for the younger children from the Karundas Children’s Center, as well as poor children from the neighborhood. Today Hall Mead School provides over one hundred students with an education, along with a nutritious breakfast and lunch, free uniforms and medical care.

Karundas Medical Clinic

The Karundas Medical Clinic offers preventative and curative medical care for Kids Alive residential and school children at no cost, and at a subsidized cost to people in the surrounding communities. Key programs include vaccinations for children, and pre-natal care for women in the community who otherwise rely on myths and superstition for their childbirth experience. The Karundas Clinic was built by Service Teams in 2004 and received its medical accreditation from the Kenyan Health Authorities in 2007.

Kids Alive Boys Center

The Boys Center provides residential care for over fifty boys between the ages of 9 and 18, giving them opportunities to become productive members of society. The children attend local schools and are involved in sports, music, Christian youth camps, and other activities. Most boys from our home graduate from high school and have the chance to attend college, giving them opportunities for a better future that would not have been possible without Kids Alive. The Center also provides a community program that provides education support for about sixty children from needy families in the nearby community.

Kids Alive Nyamarambe Children's Home

The Nyamarambe Children’s home opened in 2004 in partnership with a local church whose leadership saw the need of the vulnerable children. Even in remote villages, HIV/AIDS has taken its toll, leaving orphans struggling to survive. Over two dozen children ages five to eighteen and their house parents call Nyamarambe home.

Kids Alive Nyando Children's Home

In the Nyanza province of Western Kenya, hundreds of villages have been virtually wiped out by HIV/AIDS. Aggressive strategies have helped reduce the transmission rates but much more still needs to be done. Kids Alive has been caring for about 20 children at the Nyando Children’s Home by providing them with food, shelter and a loving, nurturing family life that God intended for them. The children attend nearby local schools and actively participate in the local church.

Kenya Keeping Families Together

The Keeping Families Together initiative in Kenya primarily helps grandmothers who of necessity are caring for their grandchildren.  In addition to healthy food, medical care and education for kids, grandmothers receive milk cows to generate income from milk sales, small plots for growing vegetables, and parenting and small business classes.

Mitaboni Children's Home

This Home, situated about two hours drive from Nairobi, currently cares for 12 children, mainly AIDS-orphans that have nowhere else to live. These children attend a local school and enjoy being part of the local church that meets on an adjacent piece of land. Kids Alive took on the management of this Home at the beginning of 2010, and over the next few years we hope to increase the number of residential children to 32, as well as develop a Families Together program in the surrounding community.

The Esther House

The Esther House is designed to care for over 40 girls, aged 15 years and older, that have grown up in the Kids Alive Karundas Children’s Center. Most of these girls are studying at High School – an opportunity that none of them would have if they were not being cared for by Kids Alive. We hope that many of them will go on to study at university in the future. In the Esther House the girls are taught important independence skills that will help them transition from our program to the outside world. Spiritual teaching is an important part of our program, and many of these girls have an active, living faith in Jesus.