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| Dan and Eddie in training! |
After much thought and peer pressure, I have decided that 2012 will be the year when I tackle a full 26.1 mile marathon for the first time. The Kilimanjaro Marathon on 26th February seems to provide a perfect opportunity, and I will be running it with my fellow VSO Volunteer Eddie Thomas (who I blame entirely for getting me into this mess). We have been training for a while but wanted to keep quiet about it until we were confident we would survive the experience! Having now toughed our way through some challenging training on Nairobi’s pot-holed, polluted, congested, hot, dusty, high altitude streets (perfect conditions, basically), we’re now 67% confident of our success. We’re hoping that our mere presence in Kenya will allow us to emulate the many awesome Kenyan runners the world has seen.
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| Circuit training on the roof of our apartment with Eddie and Allys - the secret of our success? |
I will be using this opportunity to try to raise some money for Special Education Professionals (SEP), my partner organization here in Kenya. I really hope you will consider sponsoring me – even a small amount will make a difference to this small, awesome organisation. Read on to find out why, and how, you can help...
Having worked with them for six months, I can tell you without hesitation that SEP do fantastic work. They are improving the lives of children with special needs in low income areas of Kenya like the slums of Nairobi, as well as training young Kenyan special needs professionals to ensure a new generation of high quality care for children with disabilities here. SEP is an entirely volunteer-based organization – all of its Members are special needs professionals like occupational therapists, physiotherapists, teachers and speech & language therapists, and every year they are providing their time and expertise for free to change the lives of children in Kenya with all types of disability – physical, mental, hearing impaired, visual impairment, learning difficulties, autism, down's syndrome, speech and language problems - the list goes on.
They're also working hard to try to raise awareness about the crucial need for early intervention, monitoring developmental milestones and identifying the poverty-linked problems of disease, malnutrition and poor healthcare which lead to such a high prevalence of disability in the first place. Around 50% of all disabilities are directly linked to poverty. Although many disabilities are preventable given appropriate treatment, it is estimated that only 2% of the people concerned in Kenya have access to quality rehabilitation, basic services or schooling facilities. With around 2-3 million people living in Nairobi's slums, predictably, children in these areas are much more likely to have some form of disability...
I have seen first hand the difference their work makes when I have visited the slum projects – if you haven’t already, you can read my blogs about those experiences in Kariobangi and Kibera.
Like all small, start-up organisations, SEP struggles with the basics, and top priority is often finding funding to ensure our programmes can continue. I'm doing my best to help with that, while also trying to start them on the path towards being an official, professional NGO which can afford to employ paid staff to ensure continuity and structure. But in the meantime, every little bit of money really does help.
You can find out more about SEP’s great work on our website at www.sepkenya.com, or by becoming friends with us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sepkenya or by watching our short video at http://youtu.be/O1zkWj9npnE. Here’s a few pictures of SEP’s work…
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| Beautiful boy playing with toys provided by SEP |
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| SEP work with local carpenters to produce adapted chairs which ensure children with conditions like cerebral palsy can be positioned correctly, making feeding and playing much easier |
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| Being welcomed to our project in Kariobangi slum. This chapel is where we provide therapy to children and advice and support to their parents |
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| The SEP Team at our recent strategy day which I helped facilitate |
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| Training session for young Kenyan special needs professionals |
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| Workshop with children with special needs and their parents in Kariobangi |
To give you some examples, here’s how a small donation could help:
* 500 KSh (about £3.70) pays for a day’s allowance for a young SEP Intern Member to be placed at a project in a slum area of Nairobi such as Kariobangi or Kibera. This placement gives them valuable practical experience working with children with special needs, while simultaneously providing children and parents in those areas with support they could not otherwise afford
* 1,000 KSh (£8-ish) helps to pay for a specialist book or DVD on conditions such as cerebral palsy, autism or downs syndrome to add to SEP’s Resource Centre, which is available for free to all its Members to support their learning and development as special needs professionals
* 8,000 KSh (£60) pays for a skills workshop for parents and caregivers of children with special needs to improve their knowledge of how to care for their child, position them, feed them, or stimulate their development and communication skills
* 10,000 KSh (£75) pays for a day’s training for young Kenyan professionals like recently graduated physiotherapists and occupational therapists, to develop their professional skills in areas like alternative communication, sensory integration, behavior management, or creating and using adapted equipment for children with special needs
I hope you may feel able to support me in some way, either with a small donation or by spreading the word about this event and asking your own friends and family to support us, or simply by encouraging me to keep up with my training! I realize some of you have already raised money for VSO themselves at our request – but any support, whether it be financial, verbal or moral – is massively appreciated!
Unfortunately, the whizzy world of online donation does not yet stretch to Kenyan organizations (there’s a job for someone!) so I’d like you to imagine that we’re back at school, and I’m grasping a tatty sponsorship form in my sweaty hand and looking up at you with 10 year old puppy dog eyes…
If anyone feels able to support me with a donation, please simply email me or call me to let me know, and I will send you my UK bank details. You can make a quick online transfer, I withdraw the money here and hand it in to SEP. I’ll even keep a spreadsheet and everything, so hopefully you’ll trust me to deliver the money without trying to make a buck.
Asante sana (thank you very much) for your support. Watch this space for a blog post entitled “Runners (barely) Survive Uphill Struggle”.
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