NADIA’S VISIT TO PEPO LA TUMAINI
THE VALUES AND BENEFITS OF TWINNING
INFORMATION ON THE TUMAINI TRUST
PARTNERSHIP PROPOSAL FOR
Pepo La Tumaini Ecd, Isiolo, Kenya and
Tara House Montessori, Chiswick, London
Background
Pepo La Tumaini is part of Pepoe La Tumaini Jangwani (Wind of Hope in the Desert). This is a programme started as an awareness group in 1994 as a community based response to the growing challenges posed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The group focused its activities on community education and lobbying for the rights of people living with HIV, while aiming to reduce stigmatisation and discrimination. The programme is situated in Isiolo, in the heart of Kenya, one of the poorest and most marginalised areas in Africa.
The work of the programme Founder and Director, Khadija Omar, has been recognised internationally. She has been nominated as UN Woman of the Year and received a number of other Humanitarian awards. The model for Pepoe La Tumani has been used by UNICEF when creating other similar projects throughout Africa.
MISSION: To enable restoration and rehabilitation of human dignity.
VISION: A community that is empowered to lead healthy and dignified lives with reduced vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.
VALUES: We believe in:
- Easy access to low cost health care for the local, rural community
- A holistic education system which incorporates psycho-social care, vocational training and lessons in practical life skills, in addition to academic learning, for children affected and/or infected by HIV/AIDS.
- Reducing dependency and encouraging a self-sustaining local community
- Positive living and a life free from stigma and discrimination for those affected and/or infected by HIV/AIDS.
- Educating the wider community and raising awareness of HIV/AIDS as a means of tackling both discrimination and illness.fellow citizens of the world.
The Tumaini Project:
Home Based Care
Tumaini has over 50 trained home based carers who work across the community. The project carer volunteers support those in the community who have been shunned by their friends and families because of their HIV/AIDS status. Tumaini is able to restore some hope and dignity back into the lives of those that are sick by providing both group and individual counselling, nutritional support and treatment advice.Health Clinic/Dispensary
The Clinic offers local people easy and cheap access to health screening, treatment, healthcare advice and information, including a mother and child programme. It provides outreach services for HIV testing and counselling. They see an average of 500 patients a month at the Clinic.
Rehabilitation camp/ Children’s Home
- The majority of children that enter our school programme have encountered a great deal of trauma, loss and burden in their young lives. When they arrive in our care, some are so traumatised that they are not emotionally ready to enter into a strict and intensive academic programme.
- The programme has a fully recognised and registered children’s home, which also works as a rehabilitation centre for newly received children. The camp provides the first step towards the rebuilding of lives; it is a sanctuary for those children who have reached crisis point and have nowhere else to turn. Here they receive special care for their individual needs and careful monitoring of their early stages during the rehabilitation process. It is where our programme of rehabilitation begins and it is the first vital step towards entering education.
Senior School
- Tumaini Senior School (TSS) was founded in 2007, specifically for vulnerable children from families affected by HIV/AIDS and who are at extreme risk. The majority of students have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. A large number have been brutally physically and sexually abused prior to coming to Pepoe la Tumani.
- The school covers classes 6, 7 and 8 – the last three years of primary school. Most students are between 12 – 15 years; the majority are acting as head of households which means they have been left with siblings to care for. They are now responsible for finding work and getting food to support their families.
- Most have had to drop out of formal education and have resorted to crime and begging to provide for their families. For some, this is their first experience of school.
- Our senior school is a boarding school that offers an alternative to scavenging and begging in order to survive. It helps prevent these children from falling into sex work and the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. Importantly, support is provided for the families of these students, therefore the children stay in school and can concentrate on their studies. The school gives these children the best possible chance to live successful lives. It provides quality academic and vocational education in a safe, supportive and healthy environment and also contains an important element of art therapy and other psycho-social education and support.
- By offering students training in vocational subjects and life skills, they teach them a trade, which will empower them and enable them to earn money to support their families. Therefore they will not have to go back to the life they lived before attending Tumaini, making money in a way which was illegal and degrading.
Pepo la Tumani ECDE
The Early Childhood Development and Education Centre is a day nursery which provides a safe learning environment for mainly orphaned children between the ages of three and six. The nursery can accommodate 80 children in total, most of whom are affected /infected by HIV/AIDS. The nursery provides academic study based on the Kenyan Curriculum, well as lunch and healthcare for the children. Those orphaned with no family are placed to live with Tumaini mother carers and foster families within the community. Welfare visits are carried out every term to check how the child is managed at home.
