Kenya

Rural healthcare provision

WER UK along with WNH (WER Holland), are funding improved community outreach services at Matata Hospital in Kenya. The grant has enabled Matata Hospital to train an additional 35 volunteers as community health workers  so that they can hold local clinics; educate on the dangers of HIV/AIDS, and supervise those patients who are receiving treatment. 

Matata Community Hospital is located in Rachuonyo district, Kenya within Oyugis town.  It serves the 500,000 people that live within this rural district. 

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Care for Orphans & Street Children

Hope Community Centre near Naivasha in central Kenya is home for over 200 children, some of whom are just a few months old. Many of the children have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS and were rescued from a life of struggling to survive on the streets of Kenya’s cities.

At Hope Community Centre the children have somewhere safe to live, food to eat, a chance to go to school and, most importantly, someone to care for them.

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Kenya

Situated on the Equator on Africa’s east coast, Kenya has been described as “the cradle of humanity”. In fact, some of the earliest evidence of man has been discovered in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.

Violence following the disputed December 2007 Kenyan presidential elections led to the establishment of a power-sharing government that has been in place ever since. While this new government appears to be moving forward in its policies for improving development, recent fraud and corruption scandals are a concern.

Pressing challenges for the government include high unemployment, crime and widespread poverty. Up to 80% of the population work in agriculture, producing crops such as tea (Kenya is the world's fourth largest producer), coffee and maize. The majority of these workers live well below the poverty level of $1 a day, making them especially susceptible to the devastating effects of the droughts that frequent the country. In 2009, the Kenyan government announced that upwards of 10 million Kenyans were in need of food aid.

Like many other African countries, Kenya is struggling to control the HIV/AIDS pandemic that plagues its rural population. Up to 2 million Kenyans are living with HIV, making the need for improvements in medical accessibility even more urgent.

Regardless of the socioeconomic problems facing the country, Kenya’s scenic beauty and abundant wildlife attract tourism, which has provided enormous benefits to the country and is a major source of its foreign exchange.

The most recent Human Development Report ranks Kenya at 147 out of 182 countries, with a low human development rating status. The Human Development Index (HDI) value is 0.541 compared to the HDI of the UK, which is 0.946.

WER works in Kenya in partnership with Hope Community Centre