Economic Empowerment

The AfCiC Economic Empowerment programme is designed to give people the tools to be able to support themselves economically. Primarily, this part of our work is aimed not at children who live and work on the streets, more at youths and families, those who have the capacity to work and to forge livelihoods themselves.

MAIN OBJECTIVES

To prevent children from dropping out of school to the streets because of lack of basic provision through economically empowering their guardian.
To help parents regain the self-esteem they have lost through poverty and their inability to meet their children’s basic needs, giving them a legitimate income to support themselves and their dependants.
To teach parents and guardians financial responsibility by giving loans, rather than aid, which have to be repaid over time.
To enable guardians of vulnerable children to provide for the basic needs of the children in their care, without having to depend on hand-outs.
To engage street youths in legal and productive training and work.
To enable youths and parents who want to get into work to not be hindered by not being literate.

How we do it

The activity consists in the development of the personal skills of child workers and street children with the start of professional start-up and apprenticeship courses with local artisans, shops and workshops, etc. In addition to contact with potential employers, the project also involves raising parents’ awareness of the important role of supporting and encouraging their children in continuing the new activities undertaken: the social workers of AfCiC realize meetings with parents and artisans to monitor the educational path of the children. Another important activity involves the supply of livelihoods to the most vulnerable households, especially those affected by HIV / Aids. The organization distributes dairy goats and economic contributions to the communities so that families can start income-generating activities, especially in agriculture. AfCiC collaborates with four groups of women – each consisting of about forty / sixty people – in different counties adjacent to Thika, where high infection rates have occurred. FOOD SUPPORT According to the census carried out by AfCiC in 2011, 65% of street children abandon their family nucleus of origin due to hunger. The school food program therefore aims to the goal of guaranteeing the most vulnerable and vulnerable children of slums a hot meal a day in the schools they attend, thus also reducing school drop-out. The program takes place in the three elementary schools of Garissa Road, St. Patrick and Karibaribi and has proved particularly effective also for the improvement of academic performance.

Programme features

Working Children

This is aimed at children above 14 years old who are unable to go back to secondary school, and who need productive employment to prevent them from following many down the line of alcohol and drug abuse, and not being able to support themselves or a future family. The scheme works with trainers in Thika and its surrounding towns and villages, providing apprenticeship training and giving the children vocational skills that can be directly translated into meaningful employment. Alongside the skills training, we also work with them on life skills, educating them on how to use the money they earn responsibly, how to save money, how to give good customer service,and how to market their business effectively. We find working with the boys and girls in groups is particularly effective, encouraging a cooperative style support group for savings, advice and other networking opportunities. At any one time, we normally have about 20 children in the scheme, though this depends on how successful each skills training is, with opportunities available in everything from mobile phone repair to carpentry, and from hairdressing to textile work. We even conduct market research to try and ascertain which business areas are highest in demand, to really give the children and youths’ the best chance to succeed economically.

Cultivating the Future

Livelihood support and Family Sponsorship are very similar, only that Family Sponsorship generally supports an individual family or family member, whereas Livelihood Support works with groups or cooperatives. We provide mothers of the Children we work with financial and material support of grants loans, encouraging the groups themselves to form mirco-finance initiatives, taking responsibility for their savings and growth themselves, and we continue to support these groups, and individuals, in educating them on life skills, how to live responsibility, and how they can begin to help other people in similar positions.

To further livelihood support, AfCiC in collaboration with AfricaSMAT, has been engaging in training poor local farmers on water harvesting methods using affordable systems in which the water is used for micro-irrigation especially to support kitchen gardening. Together we have trained farmers on agroforestry and afforestation, conservation tillage and production of compost manure using residues, kitchen and market wastes. This in return empowers parents and guardians to economically raising their standards of living increasing their ability to support their dependents meeting their needs.

Adult Education

We operate literacy and numeracy classes early each day in Thika, which are designed to help those both in the ‘Into Work’ scheme and in the local community to be able to function on a basic level with regards to reading, writing and maths. For alot of the boys and girls participating in the ‘Into Work’ scheme, they will increasingly need to read and sign contracts as well as creating their own marketing material, and without basic skills in the aforementioned areas, these tasks will be impossible.

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