St. Joseph Development Programmes is the developmental wing of the broader St. Joseph the Worker Parish, Kangemi. St. Joseph the Worker Parish, a parish in the informal settlement areas of Kangemi, is a Catholic Parish under the Nairobi Archdiocese. The parish was established in 1985 by the Jesuit Fathers of Eastern Africa Province. As the developmental wing of St. Joseph the Worker parish, St. Joseph Development Programmes Office was created in its current form in 1987 to coordinate and manage the various social apostolic works of the parish. Since its inception, St. Joseph Development Programmes has supervised a number of projects under the parish including Uzima HIV/AIDS programme, St. Joseph’s Technical Secondary School, Upendo Programme, St. Joseph Dispensary and Dollycraft Women Project.Upendo Programme in particular has had significant contribution in the lives of vulnerable children within Kangemi community.
St. Joseph the Worker Development Programmes strives to mitigate the adverse consequences of the AIDS epidemic within Kangemi Slum even though a number of gnawing gaps requiring urgent interventions still remain especially if we are to attain the goal of eliminating the scourge and now fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. For the majority of the residents of Kangemi slum, life is characterized by pervasive poverty, low incomes, limited access to basic health care and education and poor nutrition. Poverty is particularly severe within urban slums like Kangemi with an estimated 70% of the population living below the poverty line and disproportionately impacting women and girls.
A majority of the families in Kangemi suffer from abject poverty as well as social exclusion. Most of the women and girls within the slum are trapped in vicious cycles of poverty. The pervasive poverty within the slum is exacerbated by the entrance of the pandemic that in turn adversely impacts on the socio-economic well-being of the most vulnerable members of the community particularly women and girls. The entrance of the epidemic into their lives plunges them into deeper levels of poverty making it difficult to sustain themselves and their families. The poor health outcomes exhibited by the vast majority of the most vulnerable residents within Kangemi is rooted in the pervasive poverty within the slum resulting in limited access to health services due to low incomes that are insufficient to pay for treatment and preventative services.
Most Kangemi residents rely on poor quality, informal and unregulated health facilities that are not appropriate to their unique needs. The available private health facilities within slums are frequently unlicensed: ramshackle clinics with no working guidelines or standard protocols for services. The pervasive poverty within the slum means that the majority of the residents cannot afford to pay for treatment and preventative services.
St. Joseph Development Programmes endeavors to bridge these gaps by enhancing the sustainable implementation of our traditional areas of intervention while at the same time introducing economic empowerment that is geared towards transforming the lives of the most vulnerable beneficiaries through practical skills training for livelihood support. Leveraging on the vast capital of experience built over the years in the implementation of children educational, nutritional, medical, psychosocial and basic material support and acutely aware of the need to anchor these interventions on a sustainable foundation, we are proposing the sustainable rehabilitation, education, and integration of vulnerable children within Kangemi. The project seeks to sustainably improve the quality of life, wellbeing, and access to quality educational opportunities for the most vulnerable children of society.
To achieve this, a sustainable and multidimensional approach shall be adopted to ensure that all dimensions in the lives of the children are addressed holistically through the following specific objectives:
- Improved access to quality education and provision of basic material needs for vulnerable children, poor young boys and girls.
- Enhanced well-being for vulnerable children; young boys and girls through improved access to basic health care services, nutritional support, and psychosocial support.
- Promotion and enhancement of livelihood support by providing a sustainable integrated skills training programme for parents and guardians
