Childrens Home in Keumbu (Past Partner)
Update: Arrive is proud to announce ongoing financial support of this project by Arrive has ended; our past partner is now completely managing the on-going success of the Childrens Home in Keumbu!
It was an exciting journey with our local partners in Keumbu, watching them evolve and become self-sufficient. As local leadership demonstrated desire & ability to take on full, ongoing responsibility for the project, a mutually agreed exit strategy for Arrive was implemented, freeing our attention to move on to the next site. This is and always has been a primary tenant of our core strategy philosophy - Arrive’s role is to help local entities to improve and expand their services to orphans, vulnerable children, and street kids; to empower our partners to a self-sustaining and managed position of strength and then move on to another location to replicate the process.
Arrive is committed to helping impoverished children gain a second chance at life. We partnered with our past partner and together, we achieved this by taking orphans from the street and giving them a new chance at life at our childrens home in Keumbu. We established the home in rural western Kenya as a place of refuge for 15 orphaned children, but it has since grown. The home is situated on three acres of beautiful, fertile land. Each child sleeps in his or her own bed, goes to school everyday, eats three healthy meals per day, lives a healthy and sober life, and is happy. Arrive and our generous donors financially funded the building of most of the home and now, post-Phase 3 of Arrive's planned withdrawal, the childrens’ home in Keumbu is now fully managed by empowered leaders of the local community!
Accomplishments
In partnership with our local organization and through your generous support, we accomplished many things at our childrens’ home in Keumbu:
Rescued 37 of orphaned, homeless street children.
Provided housing and education for these children.
Built & equipped living facilities, latrines, and other infrastructure essential for improved quality of life.
Provided clean, potable water through the construction of a running water system.
Engaged in sustainable projects such as: utilization of livestock, use of solar power, etc.
Established/expanded agricultural activities with an emphasis on teaching sustainable agriculture.
Sponsored deserving students to continue their education in secondary school and polytechnic training.
Used the resources of volunteers to further Arrive’s mission and goals.
proven Success
Graduate students from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine came to our childrens’ home in Keumbu to conduct a study evaluating Arrive’s success. Through measurements and observation, they concluded:
“… children living at ARRIVE (n=22) and children living on the street (n=7) reported on their psychological distress. Results indicated that children living at ARRIVE were psychologically healthy with the majority experiencing no distress (n=17) and others experiencing some stress in one or more areas of their life (n=5). This was compared with the seven children living on street, who reported experiencing a mild degree of psychological distress (n=2), a moderate degree of psychological distress (n=3), and severe psychological distress (n=2). While limitations exist in the number of children sampled, preliminary results suggest that ARRIVE is effective in reducing the psychological distress of children living in Western Kenya.”