Economic Growth Kenya Project #26960

Virtues and Community Development for Kenya

by Virtues Project International Association

Virtues and Community Development for Kenya

Project Report | Jan 23, 2023
It Takes a VIRTUES Community...

By Daniel Dembede | Public Communication Officer

Couple at their second wedding

It’s my pleasure to write to you as the public communication officer of The Virtues Project in Kakamega and elsewhere. Among the successful projects this year includes how a Virtues Community helped a family solve their own problem.

A warring couple was having many scuffles that led them to injuring each other. The police prepared the forms to take them to court whereby both of them were ready for a divorce. Fortunately, an officer who had been trained in Virtues advised the woman to visit the Gender Based Violence Child Protection and Promotion Desk. There she met Bibiana Andabwa, the program coordinator who guides and counsels cases using the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project. The couple was re-united after undergoing virtues training and cards pick and reflecting on the same. The couple had a beautiful wedding in the church.

Their daughter was the cause of the conflict. Her mother wanted her to pursue her education, while the father wanted her to get married due to lack of funds. A virtues trained team worked out ways to get a loan. A member of that team, a young parent who had stopped drinking and turned his life around after virtues training, helped her to apply for the loan. She is now second year in the university.

This successful outcome happened because of changes that Mama Bibiana and The Virtues Project have brought to the community. The police department had virtues training. A team of virtues trained people was able to uncover a solution for the family. The young alcoholic parent had virtues training. And the couple was able to communicate with each other once again because they had virtues training. The result was a beautiful wedding in the church with Mama Bibiana as the Best Lady.

Under Mama Bibiana’s vision and leadership, Virtues and Community Development for Kenya is expanding our efforts beyond Kakamega County into three more counties. In each county, group members are trained to support bringing virtues clubs into both primary and secondary schools. Teachers will be trained to help monitor integrity in the clubs and in classrooms.

To extend the program into the community, parents will also be trained. Some parents will be identified as trainers at a community level so they can help spread virtues into families, villages, communities and schools. Training will be available on the internet and in person.

Virtues and Community Development for Kenya intends to travel to at least two schools in every county every month for virtues training programs and economic empowerment projects. One visit to a single county will cost $200-250.

We thank you for your continuing support of families and communities in western Kenya and for any ways you can help to also make this new program happen.

Couple learning about virtues

Mama Bibiana moderating a Virtues session

Virtues Training Session

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Sep 27, 2022
Inspiring all round application of Virtues

By Bibiana Andabwa | Project Leader

Students inspiring each other to practice Virtues

Since the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, the Kenyan government put in place a lot of restrictions on gatherings. These restrictions combined with the fact that this has been an election year for Kenya, have made it extremely difficult to effectively carry out many community activities including training. Despite this difficulty, we are thankful for the peacefulness that followed the general elections as we usher in this new government.

With Covid-19 restrictions came frequent school closures leading to an increase in cases of indiscipline in schools. This has resulted in an increase in attachment at the Kakamega Police Station Children Protection Unit and All Angels Lutonyi Catholic Church Gender Violence / Child Protection and Promotion Desk. We have attended to many cases affecting school children and adults in the community and within schools: truancy, early marriages/ pregnancy, sodomy, lesbianism, single parent challenges, divorce, separation, children sired from adultery, irresponsible parenting, child neglect, child abandonment, violence against children, and drugs just to mention afew.

Several of these cases are referred to us from different schools and communities due to the successful transformative experiences we have had using The Virtues Project’s Five Strategies and Virtues Picks. By holding conversations about our work with The Virtues Project, communities and schools are able to reach us and access information on alternative ways to resolve indiscipline, violence and many more social issues using the Five Strategies by The Virtues Project.

GENDER BASED VIOLENCE / CHILD PROTECTION AND PROMOTION DESK.

Some of the family related cases we receive and attend to can be very traumatizing and I have learnt to rely not only on The Virtues Project’s Five Strategies but also prayer for wisdom and direction. An example of such cases are as below;

In one family, the husband caught the wife in bed with their groundsman. He was infuriated and wanted to harm them both but a neighbor directed them to our GBV/Child Protection and Promotion Office where we met and spoke. After listening to him, we requested that he come back with his wife. We then commenced a fortnight worth of counseling sessions using the Five Strategies to resolve this dispute. Thankfully, they are now reconciled as a couple and have since dismissed the groundsman.
A 35 year old mother was sent away from their family home because she had given birth to two children with disabilities. She then planned to kill the children and later commit suicide. After many counseling sessions where we told her about the Five Strategies and how to apply Virtues to her daily life, she decided to continue living. We have since contacted the Association of Persons with Disability who have offered to support one of the children. We will also be supporting her using interest from our Table Banking project.

PLANTING OF INDIGENOUS FOOD AND VEGETABLES.

Our attempt at planting indigenous food and vegetables was disrupted by the heavy rains this year. We will be making another attempt at planting during the upcoming short rains season with the hope of harvesting, selling and using the funds to continue to inspire the practice of virtues in communities, build character in our children and empower the Virtues training beneficiaries involved in the project.

VIRTUES CARDS SWAHILI TRANSLATION

Your donations have enabled the translation of The Virtues Cards into Swahili. This will greatly improve usability with non-English speaking people in this region.

Your donations continue to help us inspire the practice of virtues in different walks of life and empower our beneficiaries with the Five Strategies of The Virtues Project to ease the practice of Virtues and live by their highest value.

Resolving indiscipline with Virtuous guidance

Healing violence and empowering with Virtues

Teaching children about setting clear boundaries

Economic empowerment for virtues beneficiaries

Giving Virtues cards to schools in handmade bags

Links:

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May 30, 2022
Virtues Activities Are Expanding

By Bibiana Andabwa | Project Leader

May 2022 Training in Kakamega

Virtues training resumed on May 21, with the virtues pick, Righteousness! Since we have a venue for our trainings, we have focused a lot of energy into community-based virtues trainings. Twenty-eight people were in attendance at our May training including teachers, post-secondary school teenagers, parents, virtues facilitators, clergy, business and civil service members. Success stories were shared by teachers, law enforcement, and community development group members.

In addition to virtues training, community development group members will receive training in table banking, farming indigenous crops and raising poultry. We provide the initial seedlings and poultry. Recently we resorted to rearing ducks, instead of chickens, because chickens were proving to be too costly due to their suceptibility to sickness and the cost of vaccines.

We are in discussions with school officials on how to bring virtues training into the school curriculum. We have been referred to Nairobi for further dscussions on our way forward..

We are are also in discussions to bring virtues training for police officers as part of the Kigano College police training program. The vision is that officers would graduate with a Virtues Certificate to help them reduce corruption cases in the country and promote integrity.

We have been able to translate virtues cards from English to Swahili. We hope to raise funds from the sale of these cards to support The Virtues Project training that we provide with the support of the Virtues Project International Association.

We thank you for your ongoing financial support and encouragement.

Virtue of Righteousness

Links:

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