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We went to Kisumu, Kenya to help Garden of Hope, a small charitable foundation, founded and operated by a good-hearted and energetic woman, Rosemary Odada. Rosemary has a rent-free room in a Kisumu church where she has taught a group of needy women to become expert sewers. Within a few days there making stacks of bags to earn a small income.
She also operates a nursery school in her home village an hour out of Kisumu for about 15 children who need pre-school training and help raising fees for elementary school.
We had heard of Rosemary from Del and Suzanne Livingstone, two Quaker field workers in Kisumu. Del has spent half of each of the past ten years teaching villagers in Kenya and other countries in central Africa how to build low-cost water filters – metal containers with layers of sand and gravel — to decontaminate the polluted water found everywhere in Kenya. Del and Suzanne had been referred to us by Kathy and Wayne Beckworth of Dayton, who had worked with Del for more than a month a few years ago.
We brought over six new electric sewing machines for Rosemary, and Del and Suzanne brought over two more for us when they returned to Kenya in January to start their 2017 half-year stint.
Rosemary was delighted. Her group of women had been laboring with several decrepit second hand machines, plus a few manual machines. Her women quickly learned to operate the new machines and were delighted at the quality and sped of the stitching.
Caye set out to find markets for their product. Initially the women began producing several sizes of colorful bags, ranging from large shoulder bags to smaller ones suited for passports. They also began experimenting with dresses and school uniforms
Caye found several missionary-based organizations that might use the bags for promotional purposes. One was Agape, a Quaker-based organization dedicated to rescuing children living on the streets – a big problem in Keya – rehabilitating them and reuniting them with some facet of their families. Another was Note, an organization formed by an American woman who also rescues street children, arranges funding for their schooling, and provides vocational training for women.
A major market would appear to be the large local Masai Markets, where many vendors offer goods to both local and tourists.
Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya with about 700,000 people, is at the western edge of the country on the short of Lake Victoria. We found the people friendly and cheerful. Interestingly, during our entire stay we saw only a handful of people smoking.. On the other hand, poverty is everywhere. Many people live in tin shacks. The roads are mostly unpaved. One thing that surprised us was the complete lack of traffic lights or signs, or even street signs, despite fairly heavy traffic. You just need to know where you’re going. We travelled mainly by ”tuk-tuk”, a motorized rickshae.
Help from Americans
We encountered a number of American groups in Kenya helping this poverty-stricken country. For us, the main one was Garden of Hope, founded and run by Rosemary Odada. Two others were Agape, which concentrates on helping street children, and Ndoto, which helps fund poor students to get into school. Click below to read about each one
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