Kigali, Rwanda - I arrived in Kigali, Rwanda, yesterday and was welcomed warmly by members of GFC grantee partner Enfant Chez Soi (ECS). ECS works with children under the age of 5 who live in prison with their mothers. The women are serving sentences that range from months to life, and their young children stay with them inside the prison cells until they reach the maximum age of 5, when they are reintegrated with family members.

ECS builds early childhood centers in prisons for the children to make sure that they receive proper nutrition, mental and physical stimulation, and education. Working with prison authorities and prisoners, the organization enables the children to enjoy their childhood, just like children outside the prison gates. ECS trains long-term prisoners to act as teachers and caretakers. To supplement the prison food, the organization has purchased cows, which are cared for by male prisoners and provide milk daily for the children. Read more

Nairobi, Kenya - The last time I visited Heshima Kenya, I wrote a blog in which I described this then prospective grantee partner in detail. I was clearly impressed by the organization’s work and programs. It’s been two years since that visit, and two years since we began supporting Heshima Kenya. And to this day, I continue to be impressed by its unique positioning as the only organization serving unaccompanied adolescent girls—refugee minors—through education, counseling, and livelihood programming.

Two years ago, I was driven to the hustle and bustle of Eastleigh, a refugee community near Nairobi that is home to a large number of Somalis, as well as Ethiopians and other urban refugees. At that time, Heshima was working with 45 girls (and the child of one of the girls) and had a small staff of about five people. As a start-up, the organization was still seeking institutional funding and relying primarily on individual donations. Yesterday, I had the privilege of visiting Heshima’s new center, located in Riverside, a peaceful and quite neighborhood that is a far cry from where the organization was when I visited last. Read more

Kibera, Kenya - On Saturday afternoon, I visited Carolina for Kibera (CFK), a GFC grantee partner that works in East Africa’s largest slum, Kibera, which is located on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. The Global Fund for Children has supported CFK’s Binti Pamoja program, which works with adolescent girls, since 2006. I arranged my meeting for Saturday so that I could have an opportunity to meet and talk with the girls who are part of the Binti Pamoja program.

I arrived a bit early and found myself wandering around the CFK offices, where a number of meetings and activities were taking place. Shortly after I entered the CFK gates, I was greeted warmly by a young woman, and I told her I was hoping to see Carolina Sakwa, the Binti Pamoja program coordinator. She returned some five minutes later and told me she would walk me down to where the Binti Pamoja program is located. On our way to the center, she and I introduced ourselves and began talking about the program. Read more

Nairobi, Kenya - The Global Fund for Children, as part of its membership in the Grassroots Girls Initiative, is currently conducting a case study on its grantee partner Center for Domestic Training and Development (CDTD), based in Nairobi, Kenya. The case study is intended to highlight the critical role that grassroots organizations play in reaching, serving, and empowering vulnerable adolescent girls.

CDTD promotes the rights and protection of domestic workers by professionalizing the industry through a formal training curriculum; working with employers to provide worker rights and human rights training; and working with communities to identify children engaged in domestic work to ensure that they are removed from the field. A small organization driven by the passion, ambition, and determination of its founder, Edith Murongo, CDTD has accomplished significant feats in its few years of life, including having trained hundreds of young women and having obtained the government’s accreditation for its East African household management training institute. Read more

Lilongwe, Malawi - I am not sure why I find Malawi particularly different. It’s not unlike many of the other countries in which The Global Fund for Children invests in community-based organizations. But in Lilongwe, Malawi, it appears that every fourth car is a white car belonging to an NGO or an international development organization.

This is my first visit to this southern African country, home to close to 14 million inhabitants. This small, beautiful country has had to contend with a harsh HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and left over 1 million children orphaned. Couple that with ongoing food insecurity challenges, and Lilongwe, at least, appears to offer fertile ground for NGOs, and bilateral and multilateral institutions, to plant their country offices and programs.

I had a few productive meetings with multilateral and international organizations here, and I was able to learn about why education and programs for orphans and vulnerable children must be a priority in Malawi. These organizations know the country well and have a clear articulation of their programs and strategies over time and geographic space. Read more