Nakuru Safehouse for Kenya Women and Children

Hello Everyone,

One of the heartbreaking realities of life in Kenya is the extreme poverty. Six-year-old Joab and nine-year-old Lavix’s HIV positive mother was put in jail when she was reported to the police for child neglect. She was forced to leave Job, Lavix and their one-year-old brother Raj inside their 12x12, one room home while she went out looking for odd jobs such as washing and cleaning to feed her family. The one-year-old was allowed to stay in prison with his mother sleeping on a thin dirty mattress in a room with 20 plus women and their babies; however, the older children were placed in a place known as Juvenile Remand. This is a horrible place for young innocent children as they are placed in a dormitory with older children who are there awaiting trial for crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery with violence. Alleged criminals up to 18 years of age are sharing the same dormitories with innocent children such as Job and Lavix at remand. I have been told that some of these alleged criminals are actually up to 21 years old and simply lie about their age to stay in juvenile remand as opposed to jail. I learned about remand several years ago when I went down to Children’s Services to pick up the magistrate's commitment orders for two children that had been placed in my care and (of course) came home with two sets of orders and these two gorgeous children, Job and Lavix. Who could say no after hearing that they had been in remand for over three months?  These children had no idea why they were suddenly placed there or where their mother and baby brother had been taken.

The first thing I did was arrange for a visit to their mother and baby brother in prison. I then arranged to have Mama Lavix released into our care on parole and enrolled in a program training HIV-positive women to sew beautiful bags for sale to tourists.

Mama Lavix and the three children lived with us for a month while she was on probation and training at her new job. I loved seeing the joy and happiness the two older children experienced at being reunited as a family again. The bitter, sweet day came when Mama Lavix passed her unpaid one month training period and was hired on as a full-time paid employee. For the first time in her life, she was receiving a regular, reliable income. I say bitter, sweet only because it was time to say goodbye to two great kids who had been part of our family for several months, and Mama Lavix and baby Raj who had lived with us for just over a month. We assisted her with the first month’s rent on her new home, mattresses, blankets and a few necessities to get her set up.

That was over five years ago. I recently heard that Mama Lavix is still working at the same organization sewing bags for tourists. However, and this is the other great part of her success story, she has also opened a hair braiding salon which employs three vulnerable young women who would have found themselves in a similar situation if it wasn't for Mama Lavix's help.

If it wasn’t for your support back then I simply cannot imagine what the fate of this family would have been.

We didn’t place in the top 4 in GlobalGiving’s Little by Little campaign last week, missing out on  $3,000 in bonus money. But we are delighted with the response we did get. Your donations made a lasting difference for our children in Kenya AND created a race to the top!

Because our project did so well, the other projects in contention had to ramp up their efforts to get ahead of us - meaning your support for girls in Kenya inspired others to empower more girls in the Dominican Republic, educate more girls in Cambodia, sponsor STEM camp for more girls in Nigeria, and help more girls in Vietnam get to school. We're so proud to have been a part of this competition where girls around the world came out as the clear winners.

Thank you so much to every one of you who made this campaign such a success! 

I appreciate your readership, please pass on our newsletter to family and friends, it is a way of helping us help more children in Kenya.

Warmly,

Jennifer Hughes-Bystrom

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Dear Friends and Family,

While we are still in the early days of raising funds to set up the NAKURU SAFE HOUSE, I would like to share with you why this project is so important to us at Springs of Hope Foundation. 

WHAT IS A SAFE HOUSE?

If a young child is raped, often by a family member and the rape is brought to the attention of the police the offender is arrested, the child is removed from the family environment until the case goes to trial. This is to prevent the child’s testimony from being influenced by the family. Unfortunately, there is no facility in Nakuru to temporarily place the child. The child may spend her or his first night in the county jail until the magistrate releases the child into the care of the Remand Home until the case comes to trial, this could take several months.

When a child is found lost in the street and is brought to the police station he or she will spend the evening, or weekend in jail until the judge commits the child to the Remand Home the following business day. The child will remain there until children’s services can track down the child’s family.

A single mother is arrested and sentenced to prison for 3 months. Her crime, locking her 3 children, the youngest one under one year, in their 10x10 home while she desperately searches for any kind of day work to feed her children. She is allowed to keep her youngest child with her in prison, a cell shared by approximately 19 other women along with their babies, who all sleep on the ground on worn out mattresses and threadbare blankets. The two older children aged 4 and 6 are committed to the Remand Home until children’s services can find a children’s home willing to take the children on a temporary basis. Most children's homes are full and do not have the facilities to accomodate temport cases, so in most cases the children will remain in at the Remand Home until their mother's sentance is served and she is released from jail.

These are just a few of the reasons why innocent children find themselves temporarily living in the Remand Home.

WHAT IS THE REMAND HOME?

In Kenya, when a juvenile under the age of 18 commits a crime they are held in the Remand Home awaiting trial. Many alleged criminals have been in the remand home for several years, thus fostering further aggressive, criminal behiviour. There are approximately 80 juvenile alleged offenders living in the Nakuru Remand facility at any given time. Their alleged crimes range from murder (currently five juveniles classified as 18yrs or under, in custody awaiting trial for murder), rape (currently 12 alleged rapists in custody), sexual assault, robbery using violence, drug dealing etc. There is no school in the remand home. The children temporarily committed to the home by the magistrate are not separated from those sentenced there awaiting trial for criminal activity. They share the same dormitories.

SOLUTION

Springs of Hope Foundation has registered “Nakuru Safehouse” as a Community Based Organization. With your help, we are in the process of opening a safe, secure home for these innocent children to live in while permanent solutions for their safety and wellbeing are found. Ideally, the solution will be to reunite the child with their families, relatives or guardians.

Thank you for your help with the initial set up of this brand new pilot program. I look forward to telling you about the progress of the Safe House and sharing great success stories of the children and families we have been privileged to help. It will be an exciting journey that we will take together.

Warmest blessings,

Jennifer Hughes-Bystrom