Partners

Hands of Relief

We first met with Shem Asuma at the office of Hands of Relief in January of 2018 after a year of regular correspondence. Shem evaluates where the greatest needs are in the poorest regions of Nakuru County and has established relationships with others within his community that can assist with donations of food and clothing. Volunteers assist Shem with the distribution of items — mostly done on foot due to lack of resources. Shem checks in regularly with those assisted by the program to ensure their needs are being met. He has great respect and admiration among his people because of his selfless acts of love done in Jesus’ Name.

Hands of Relief seeks to offer a helping hand to families and individuals hit hard by poverty while giving more focus to those who have been affected by HIV/AIDS. They do so through several initiatives including the following:

1. The Family Empowerment Initiative is dedicated to impacting families disadvantaged by social and economic circumstances. This initiative is focused on enabling poor households to enhance and develop their quality of life and become architects of their future by presenting opportunities for spiritual, educational, and economic transformation. The initiative focuses its efforts on direly destitute households. Currently Shem is training several women on how to start their own soap-making business.

2. The Sacks of Hope Initiative aims at ensuring HIV/AIDS-affected families struggling with nutrition are able to keep their immune-systems strong by having a constant supply of nutritious food.

3. Water Hygiene and Sanitation aims at training and sensitizing families on safe water collection and storage and also clean hygienic methods of operation around the home to help the community reduce the occurrence of water borne diseases.

4. The Relief Bank Initiative. At one time the face of this particular need was a tattered-looking homeless man. Today the faces have changed to include a family where the adult is terminally ill and skips meals to afford medication, or a child who barely has one meal a day. The Relief Bank is where Hands of Relief stores the graciously donated food, clothes, shoes, books, and more for distribution to the very needy. The bank identifies destitute individuals who lack basic needs and tries to address those immediate needs. Those served by the Relief Bank include:
-Families experiencing emergency setbacks
-Child-headed households that lack basic needs
-Terminally-ill, bedridden individuals in the slums
-Early childhood centers with no basic items

Finally, Hands of Relief seeks to empower individuals and families through sustainability measures. This includes: Household empowerment initiatives, youth and women empowerment initiatives including vocational training, market-driven community micro-enterprises, and livestock and poultry projects.

The EYE Centre

The EYE Children’s Centre was born in 2011 out of Vincent Ojiambo’s vision and mission to bring relief to Kenyan children and youth living in the Kibera slums in Nairobi. The goal is to mold and model these beloved children into active and responsible members of society. Situated in a community overwhelmed by extreme poverty, unemployment, semi-literacy, and the HIV/AIDs pandemic, the EYE Children’s Centre offers orphans and vulnerable children a place of refuge where they can receive a hot meal, basic education, shelter, clothing, and the opportunity to be a child through games, sports, and fun days outside of the slums.

The center started with one orphaned girl and now serves 50 children. There are currently 18 children staying in the children’s home who are fully under their care, in addition to the dozens of children indirectly cared for under an umbrella support program. With the help of five volunteers who serve periodically, the EYE Center offers educational programs for primary and secondary students, a sponsorship program, shelter for homeless children, games and athletic opportunities, talent nurturing, peer education, children’s rights awareness forums, guidance for teens through adolescence and into adulthood, health education and HIV/AIDS awareness, community cleanliness and hygiene awareness, vacation Bible school and the opportunity to hear the gospel in a daily setting.

The hope of the leaders of the EYE Center is to one day afford to purchase land outside Kibera on which to build a safer, more permanent structure to house and school the children they serve and to have the opportunity to create a self-sustaining center.