Our Projects
Nairobi - Kenya
Human Rights' education and promotion in the slum of Korogocho 2019-2022
In Korogocho, 150,000 people live in extreme poverty on 1.5 sq.km. It is a marginalised community whose human rights are regularly violated: right to education; life and social security; health; an adequate standard of living and work.
We will provide a group of talented youths with the relevant theoretical and practical skills to demand and defend the human rights of the community. The objective is the creation of a network of youths able to get the community out of its social and economic exclusion. We will have two local partners: 1) Comboni missionaries; 2) Tangaza University College, which will be responsible for the academic programmes at the Human Rights' clubs in the schools and the Diploma in Civic Development and Education for the young adults.
Goal of the project: the community of Korogocho negotiates with the local authorities its requests for a positive social transformation and for the respect of human rights in the slum.
Nairobi - Kenya
Improving EDUCATION in KOROGOCHO 2015-2018
Access to education is far from easy for children born in the slums. St. John’s Community Library offers a safe haven, access to textbooks and Internet, and a gateway to a brighter future.
Nairobi - Kenya
Professional Training Centre for street youths 2016-2019
For teeneagers growing up in the slum, hopelessness can lead way to drug abuse and apathy. The care and attention provided at Kibiko rehabilitation centre give teens the chance to have a brighter future.
Ambodivoahangy - Madagascar
Training and Community Centre 2017-2019
The school development program aims to equip the school with the facilities needed to enable the students and teachers to thrive. The vision for this project is to reach higher degrees of self-sufficiency for the rural community.
Korogocho Educational Program
From 2015 to 2018, we have implemented an educational project in the slum of Korogocho, Nairobi (Kenya) in partnership with the Comboni Mission. The project was co-financed by the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Directorate for Cooperation and Development).
The project was centred around St. John’s Community centre and the Community library to improve access to education in the slum and to empower the local community.
Together with our local partners, we have:
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Built an extension to the library to double its previous capacity;
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Created an ICT centre with 16 personal computers, 2 printers and photocopiers, and a strong access to Internet;
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Provided the library with 10,000 textbooks for primary and secondary schools;
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Created a book-lending programme for 30 schools in the surrounding slums;
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Built 6 classrooms, purchased desks and chairs for a local primary school (Emmaus) to rescue street children from the Dandora dumping site;
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Providing St. John’s Sports Society with much needed sports’ equipment to attract more children to the sports’ club and to the Library.
Today, the Library and ICT Centre is run in a sustainable way by the Comboni Mission for the community.
The number of students attending the library grew from 700 in 2015 to 2,200 in 2019.
Textbooks and access to the Web foster Education,
Education helps people come out of poverty
The project is co-financed by the Luxembourgish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
This is a rehabilitation centre for street and addicted youth from Korogocho. In partnership with the Comboni missionaries, we are going to build a carpentry workshop, which will enable the young beneficiaries to learn professional skills. This will, in turn, help the young beneficiaries to find a job which will complete their reintegration into society.
Our project involves the construction of two workshops: a carpentry workshop and an electrical and plumbing workshop, where young people can be trained. The practical courses in carpentry and mechanics will be accompanied by courses in entrepreneurship, accounting, business management, customer service and marketing. Therefore, we have planned to build a training centre with a classroom and rooms for teachers and pupils.
Professional Training Centre
Madagascar
North-South Cooperation together with EDI Madagascar launched a 30-month (2017-2019) project in Madagascar. The project consists in the construction of a school in Ambodivoahangy, a small rural village on the Eastern Coast of Madagascar.
The village has no access to electricity and the only source of water is stagnant water, which causes frequent diseases and infections. The new school will be equipped with 3 classrooms, sanitary facilities, a rainwater harvesting system and will provide meals every day to its pupils. Although the school is located in a „strategic“ position, surrounded by four villages within 3 km, the access is difficult due to the absence of paved roads.
The school presents an opportunity for the children, a place where they can learn and emancipate themselves. The project also foresees to launch training programs where young people and adults can learn and develop new skills. These include alphabetization courses, professional training, civic education, sexual education, food safety courses and hygiene courses. The program aims to enable current and future generations to emancipate themselves and improve their living standards, while at the same time providing new employment opportunities for them.
The main objective of Mitia Madagasikara, the local partner organization, is the empowerment of nearby rural villages. Education guarantees this objective on a long-term perspective, empowering the youth and future generations.
Our Partners
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Tangaza University College
This is a Nairobi-based University, which has decided to take higher education to slum dwellers. In particular, it has developed a « Diploma in Civic and Development Education », which trains civic educators to create new consciousness in their communities and hence facilitate a positive social transformation.
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Emmaus Educational Centre
This is a primary school that strives through limited resources to offer competitive educational and marketable skills through vocational training. The majority of the children at the centre hail from the slums neighbourhoods of Ngomongo, Korogocho and Dandora Estates. One of the pillars of the institution is to offer counselling to orphaned children and/or HIV/AIDS affected and infected parents who find the institution to stand out as an educational centre compared to established formal educational institutions with the offer for free education not withstanding.
The institution has been lucky to have netted determined and industrious teachers, both trained and non-trained, who despite meager salaries, tirelessly continue to offer quality education which has also played a big role in attracting more children to the school.
The centre envisions using a non-conventional approach in training the beneficiaries through a holistic and integral personal development in restoring self-esteem and human dignity.
The main objective of Emmaus Educational Centre has been to reduce the number of desperate orphans and vulnerable individuals in the neighbourhood. The main problem of earlier initiatives has been occasioned by orphans and vulnerable individuals relapsing back into desperation due to lack of sustainable vocational training to enable them access employment opportunities thereof. It is from the foregoing that there was a felt need and urgency for a new focused initiative.
However in this struggle to meet the objectives, Emmaus Educational Centre meets the following challenges which beg for urgent solutions. These include: inadequate learning and teaching facilities e.g. Textbooks, Exercise Books, Pens, Pencils, Erasers, Spring files, Rulers, chalks etc.; furniture e.g. desks, tables, shelves, chairs etc.; inadequate feeding programme that offers sustainable ration to all children; urgent need to provide sanitary pads to girls who direly require them.
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St John's Community Centre
St John’s Catholic Church has created St. John’s Community Centre in the heart of Korogocho. The centre, run by Comboni missionaries, is meant to serve the people of Korogocho through several development projects aiming at the empowerment of the community: sports, education and advocacy.
In particular, St. John’s Education Centre comprises of a nursery school, a primary school, a community library and an ICT centre. The school hosts over 700 pupils in nursery and primary. The staff of the school is of 20 teachers and 5 non-teaching staff.
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Napenda Kuishi Trust
“Napenda Kuishi” in Kiswahili, the official language in Kenya, means: “we want to live” and this is our motto and our goal for all those we serve.
Napenda Kuishi is a large rehabilitation program based in the slum of Korogocho, comprising three centres, that offers a wide variety of rehabilitation opportunities for young people living in the streets under the influence of drugs.
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MAEE
We have the Agrément by the Luxembourg Ministry for Foreign Affairs / Directorate for Development Cooperation.
Sustainability
Sustainability is a key criterion in all of our interventions. Before launching a new project, we make sure that it is sustainable, not only in social and economic terms, but also environmentally.
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Social and economic sustainability
We are always committed to a bottom-up approach that puts the beneficiary communities in the centre of our interventions. We try to ensure the best possible ownership by the beneficiary communities by involving them in the decision-making processes. By being aware of the needs of the communities, we make sure that our projects are relevant and that the communities play a part in carrying them on even after the "end" of the activities financed by NSC. Thanks to thorough financing plans, we seek to minimize dependence and make sure that the impacts of our interventions continue into the future.
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Environmental sustainability
Social justice and equality is linked to respect for the environment in the long term. Therefore, in our projects we promote the use of sustainable materials, and environmentally-friendly energy generation. The aim is to reduce the carbon and energy footprint of the the infrastructure we build, by increasingly relying on renewable energy sources such as solar panels, or by using rainwater collection systems. We also installed new energy-efficient LED lights at the Korogocho library that illuminate the desks and shelves for much longer using a fraction of the energy needed by conventional bulbs. Together with a new electricity back-up system, the reliability of the library services has thus been considerably improved in an area where electricity cuts are the norm. The library is now greener, less dependent on the electricity network and more attractive to its users.