COVID-19 EMERGENCY RESPONSE

At the beginning of 2020, the world watched as China placed entire regions in quarantine to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus. At the time, few could imagine that many countries would follow suit. But on March 11, COVID-19 had already spread to more than 110 countries, and the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. Since then, countries around the world have also introduced sweeping measures to slow the spread of the virus which was not wrong in any way but all could work when there are other supplements put in place.

We as Twende Pamoja Organization we have tried to our best by keep going 673 households compost of 3400 people through the help of Team Kenya during this hard time of COVID19.  

Since mid of match 2020, we have distributed items (both consumable and non-consumable) to vulnerable families in  Ndhiwa sub-county.

Alongside food and other items, we educate the community against the Pandemic and how to go about it by taking government directives through health departments seriously by implementing them. 

Due to government directives measures put in to fight this pandemic disease no gatherings are allowed if there might be then only a maximum of 15 people are allowed, on which social distance must be observed alongside wearing a face mask and sanitizing hands. 

This becomes a challenge to many people in our community and we found out that a good number doesn’t observe this and bringing them together to create awareness against COVID19 among them and give them support could have been a challenge.

We had to work out things accordingly and we come up with a strategy that could help us fight the spread of this deadly disease among us as well as supporting needy families. Our team do work door to door to give out the support to the community more so vulnerable families and this has really helped us since the breakout of this deadly disease.

Even though many women have been trained in table banking and are capable of doing some productive activities which can bring some income(money) to support their families this pandemic caught many unaware and life also has to continue that is why we are out to reach the women who are 52 in number and this brings 52 household compost of 260 people.

We support these women with items like maize, beans, bar soap, cooking oil, face mask, and some little cash which they use as their transportation cost from their respective home to our office to pick up the support and back.

There are some homes where our team identified girls who are living in extreme poverty but very bright, such girls we give items like solar lamps, sanitary towels, panties slippers gumboots, body jelly to help them moving towards brighter futures.

The pandemic has forced us to tentatively close our Community Library and no user can access it at the moment, our LRC team, Librarians  have come

out with a strategy of helping our 15 partnering schools get service as before, in these 15 schools there are 10 extra support girls per schools,  there are 10 book club students in

9 schools, and out of 15 schools that we are partnering with 14 of them have candidates that are yet to seat for their final exam, in each school, there are

9 candidates and this brings the total number of pupils to 366

Snapshot of the book club and candidates

students with their papers and face masks.

Snapshot of extra support with their

face mask and soap to help them

fight against COVID19

The total number of students that we are helping through this program are;

Extra support  150

Book club          90

Candidates        126

TOTAL  366

In our response to this Pandemic diseases, our team which is working door to door come along many vulnerable families but Lilian Achieng story was painful and draws our attention and we were so much determined on how to change the life of Lilian who is bright but the environment she is currently living in seems to be ruining her future life and due to this we called her into our office for a way forward.  you can click the link  here to get the full life story of Lilian; https://youtu.be/VxKcw95oM3U

Our  warm regards to Team Kenya and Mentors Team who have empowered our activity endlessly and making all this possible by bringing smiles and tears of joy to over 3400 families.

KUDOS everyone.