Nyanya Project

Amani Ya Juu is a non-profit which was started in the late 1990s by Becky Chinchen, a missionary from Tennessee. She and her husband wanted to make a difference for marginalized women in Africa. Four women began making placemats. Today, more than 100 women “sew for peace” in Amani’s Nairobi headquarters where the women create extraordinary fabric crafts, clothing and jewelry and learn how to be leaders “promoting peace in Africa.” Women come from many different countries, and Amani Ya Juu now operates new centers in Rwanda and Burundi. Amani Ya Juu is currently training four Nyanya Project grandmothers from the slums of Kibera. These women are in a four-year program in which they learn skills and earn money, and TNP grandmothers are committed to exemplifying their new skills and leadership to their family members and other women and grandmothers in Kibera. Visit www.amaniafrica.org.

Burning Bush Foundation, another American non-profit, is involved in various projects in Ndathi, Kenya, a small farming village in the green hillsides of central Kenya near Mt. Kenya.  The organization funded the construction of the Samaritan Maternity Home there and continues to support its operation. Susan Kaburu, a nurse/midwife, owns the clinic and works to provide basic healthcare to the 20,000 residents of the area.  Prior to this clinic, villagers had to travel 10 miles to the nearest clinic. Burning Bush also supports other community development projects, mostly through microcredit groups. The Nyanya Project was introduced to Burning Bush, who thought the idea of serving area grandmothers caring for grandchildren orphaned by AIDS was very needed.  Fourteen grandmothers were identified, and since June, 2007, these women meet weekly and through funds provided by TNP now have some of their immediate needs met and a herd of sheep which is run by the grandmothers’ cooperative.  These 14 women are caring for a total of 39 children and grandchildren.  More sheep and goats will be added to their herd to generate income from selling, butchering and mating their sheep. As the herd grows, TNP hopes to train the grandmothers in knitting products from their wool for sale in Africa and the U.S. Visit www.burningbushkenya.org.

Peter Wahome is an Ashoka Fellow, Community Development Leader and Crafts Distributor in Nairobi. Peter is also founder of People to People Tourism that promotes cross-cultural understanding through tours in Kenya. He was introduced to The Nyanya Project last summer, and Peter took TNP to a small village called Kisesini several hours drive south of Nairobi. Kisesini is located in the dry countryside near the town of Machakos where there are no roads and no water. Women, including grandmothers caring for grandchildren who are orphaned by AIDS, must walk more than 12 miles each day to fetch water from a nearby stream. Peter also introduced TNP to Global Health Partnerships, an NGO of health care professionals from the University of New Mexico. Global Health has just completed construction of the village’s first medical clinic. Previously, villagers had to walk or ride by donkey or ox cart to the nearest clinic nearly 20 miles away. Some mothers in labor die en route. TNP has funded the geological survey which has now determined two water sources near the village. Once funds for a borehole have been secured by TNP, the village will have its first water, the clinic will function at full capacity, and grandmothers of AIDS orphans will manage the well, when built, to provide ongoing income for their families. Visit www.ashoka.org and www.peopletopeopletourism.com.

Friendly Integrated Development Initiatives in Poverty Alleviation (FIDIPA) is a registered non-profit agency in Kenya that focuses on families affected by HIV/AIDS. Its program director, Jayne Nyapaul, was introduced to TNP last summer by Samuel Gichere, Chief Economist of Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, who now serves on TNP’s Board of Directors. FIDIPA is a comprehensive outreach program to people living with AIDS (PLWAS) and their families by providing training, health care, counseling and home-based care. It became a registered non-profit in spring, 2007, but has been operating successfully in Kenya for more than five years. Its programs in western Kenya are already serving more than 300 grandmothers of AIDS orphaned grandchildren. Jayne and founder, Mary Martin Niepold, are developing a program for western Kenya that will build shelters for grandmothers and purchase land that the grandmothers can manage as rental properties to generate ongoing revenue. Initial programming and training will launch in February, 2008. Plans are underway for athletes from Wake Forest University to build shelters for these grandmothers in the summer of 2008, and the North Carolina School of the Arts hopes to film a documentary of their activities. Visit www.fidipa.org.