Hi!

Kabondo project may be too small for them, but could be worth investigating as they have a Small Grants scheme as well as the bigger stuff.

Elton John AIDS Foundation
http://www.ejaf.com

http://www.ejaf.com/Ourwork
"ABOUT OUR WORK

The Elton John AIDS Foundation in the UK has funded over 1,100 projects worldwide with grants totaling more than £30 million. We are the largest HIV/AIDS grant maker in the UK and one of the 20 largest international AIDS charities.

Our mission is to empower people infected, affected and at risk of HIV/AIDS; to alleviate their physical, emotional and financial hardship, enabling them to improve their quality of life, live with dignity and exercise self-determination.

Our grant programmes have already helped an estimated 12 million people infected, affected or at risk of HIV/AIDS to receive medical and social care, food, training, housing, legal protection, counselling and emotional support. We have also enabled 150 million people from around the globe to access HIV/AIDS information."

How to apply for a grant
http://www.ejaf.com/Applyingforgrants

They fund projects in a limited number of countries including Kenya. Page contains links to details of these and the funding strategy, and how to apply for each country. Includes a short ‘Am I eligible to apply’ checklist

Kenya
http://www.ejaf.com/Ourwork/Countries/Kenya
http://www.ejaf.com/Ourwork/Countries/Kenya/KenyaGrantStrategy

Mary

Hi Everyone,

As you may recall, we managed to gather enough votes to have a page on GiveMeaning. To date, we have raised over $300, but we are still far from our goal of $2500. As the timeframe we were given to collect the funds will be ending in May, I ask that you pass the link and info on to as many people as you can. Maybe post a link on Facebook or if you have a blog, post a link there as well. The more people driven to the page, the greater chance we have of raising the funds! The funds will go towards a number of initiatives including agriculture and income-generation activity loans.

Here is the link www.givemeaning.com/project/kabondo

:-D

Best wishes,
Barb

Dear Neighbours,

Kabondo has faced considerable challenges especially with regards to fundraising. While the community members and the board have together come and identified their problems, finding the leverage to make the next best steps have proved elusive. I admire what the community members are doing with the limited resources they have to attempt to make a difference but i submit that they need support.Getting major support has proved to be a great challenge. We have learnt in the past two years or so that individuals touched to help only one family or one disadvantaged child ends up making a difference, one moment at a time. These are the heroes and heroines of change.

The community members have identified their needs as centred on 5 main areas i.e. HIV/AIDS, Education, Access to Clean Water, Health and Agriculture.When a HIV positive child on Anti Retro viral Treatment cannot adhere to his/her drugs because of the absence of food or the help of an older person, when a desperate subsistence farmer who knows planting his/her half acre farm will pull her out of hunger for a year cannot afford fertilizer for higher yields or the little amount needed to hire ox drawn ploughs to prepare land for planting, when a community drinks coloured water for lack of another choice or when a malnourished child or child dies before his/her 5th birthday because of preventable diseases like measles, malaria, diarhoea, cholera and other waterborne diseases, definitely there is something wrong. It therefore comes to see that an edifice that produces such a society needs restructuring and support.

When any individual or corporate reaches out to such a HIV positive child, the subsistence farmer, the desperate community drinking dirty water or the malnourished and sick child getting another chance at life, there is definitely a difference for that one.Children, i believe are our future and if we donot invest in them, we are divesting in our own future. This is the reason we thought of coming with an orphan welfare and support project to lift them out of their current situation and a HIV/AIDS Behaviour Change Project to sensitize them so that they do not share the fate of their parents. The other intervention is to initiate a Vocational Skills Training Program targeting older orphans in child headed households who have been left behind by the hope and promise of formal education. Such older orphans can be trained in short courses geared towards gainful self employment or formal employment e.g. hairdressing, carpentry, welding, motor mechanics, catering, driving among others.

There are small ways through which you can help Kabondo without looking for large donations/donors that it is the vogue to approach.

1.You can mobilize individuals in your town or community to contribute any little amount they can give. No amount is too small and whatever you give will rise to some big need and may be the launch pad to the flight away from poverty for certain families.

2.You can mobilize students and staff of Schools in your locality to donate funds or materials to help disadvantaged children in Africa.Such twining of schools can have far reaching positive consequences to the schools and children involved.

3. You can organize small fund raisers for Kabondo or sell post cards or greeting cards in your locality with pictures of the orphans and their strong grandmothers in the cover. Through this the proceeds from the sale can go to the individual children and a one on one sponsorship program between the buyer and the child can develop.

4. You can link Kabondo with any individuals, organizations or corporate bodies willing to help alleviate the impact of poverty and ill health.

There are neighbours who have helped Kabondo make small but very important steps through these networks, collaboration and above the will and motivation to share something about Kabondo with your next best friend or neighbour. Remember history is not made by Kings and presidents but by ordinary people doing extra ordinary things.

I know other people can be very innovative in their own ways like sharing the plight of HIV/AIDS orphans with their own children who end up giving generously or just selling personal items they donot need and donating the proceeds to charity. We donot want to limit your resourcefulness. I want to thank the people who have done and continue to do these extra ordinary things in their own small way.People like Barbara Briggs, Lady Pearl of Calgary Canada, Tammy Lewis, Jordanna and her Father, Ineke Boorsma in Netherlands, Carole Griffiths in the UK and Deanna of Gooods4Girls. We can look back and count a few packages of success because of you.

Thank You!

Eric
Local Representative

Dr. Lucy Steinitz visited Kabondo on 1st and 2nd November to carry out an assesment visit for possible funding on behalf of the Stephen Leiws Foundation. Dr. Steinitz is co-founder of Catholic AIDS Action in Namibia (www.caa.org.na) and co-founder and chairperson of the board of CAFO; The Church Alliance for Orphans (www.cafo-namibia.org).She aslo works with Family Health International(www.fhi.org).

It is the policy of The Stephen Lewis Foundation to send a representative to any project they are actively considering for funding. We were privileged to host her to meet the board, asses the management and financial systems in place and also visit the beneficiaries of the project. The visit took 2 days and a report will be forwaded to SLF to help them make a final decision.

Dr. Lucy visited children supported by the project and a widow who is struggling with a small business that earns her less than a dollar a day (KShs 50) to feed her four children and help her provide the basic necessities. Though she is semi literate, Dr. Lucy was inspired and moved by Mrs Benter Owino's courage and strategic plan and donated KShs 5,000 of her own monwy to help her expand her business capacity to be able to make at least KShs 300 a day.

We thank Lucy for helping Kabondo Poverty Alleviation Organization(KPAO) reach out to one widow who has shown the way that hard work and determination can help the poor make great strides away from dependence.

Eric
Local Representative

A neighbour, Tammy Lewis of London, Ontario Canada has produced wonderful post cards with the message "Sending Christmas Hope" which she is selling this festive season in Canada to raise funds for educational and basic needs of the orphaned and vulnerable children of Kabondo, Kenya.

We salute these innovative ways of fundraising for the children and take this opportunity to invite all friends and well wishers of Kabondo willing to donate, purchase the cards or help us sell the cards to contact Tammy Lewis (tammy_lewis@sympatico.ca) or our village facilitator Barb Briggs (dbbriggs@telus.net) or Kabondo Local Representative Eric Ochanji (eochanji@yahoo.com).

Thank you all for your support.

Eric
Local Representative

Check out ARC contest (http://arc.peacecorpsconnect.org/contest)

ARC is calling for ideas to address fundamental problems of agricultural development and rural poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa; and especially to help the rural poor (women, children) and respond to the needs of rural communities.

I have submitted a project in Kenya - "The Ndekero Challenge: A Systems Approach for Rabbit Keeping by a Rural Community in Partnership with a Commercial Rabbit Farm". A goal of ARC is to find models that can be duplicated/adopted in Sub-Sahara African countries. Kenya has potential sites (including Kabondo) that can adopt the Ndekero Challenge approach. We need to have a project with ARC funding in Kenya and raising meat rabbit for income generation by widows is one of such activity.

Please help to endorse my project (see instructions in http://www.globetree.org/africa/rabbit-net/arc-endorse.htm).
+++ my projects in Kenya http://www.globetree.org/africa/rabbit-net/projects.htm
see also NTV Kenya's News clip of 21 Sept in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTuMoosJSQk).

Hi Foo,

Thank you very much for this information. I will check this out and also endorse your project.

Eric