In Island of Hope we have an orphanage which is catering for needy children who are either orphaned and do not have relatives to take care of them effectively for them to go to school or those children with either of the parents but are not able to offer a conducive environment for children to go to school.
The orphanage has a total number of 41 children 19 boys and 22 girls against 4 rooms to the boys and 4 rooms for the girls. Each room was meant to host 4 children but since there were more demands, some of whom were very desperate cases, already the rooms are overcrowded. The orphanage buildings have the capacity of 32 children and now we have 41 children. The children who had to join when the room were already full because of their condition.
This population needed another building and through Eva Hlavatá and Dana Ferminová we got the support of SLOVAC AID and now we are building a modern Girls Hostel. This Hostel is now under construction and will be ready by the end of October. It has a capacity of 40 girls. This now means that the old buildings will remain for the boys.
We again have a child Monica Odira Achieng whom we have brought in the orphanage. Her father died and her Mother remained in Homabay 40km from Rusinga Island. When she followed her mother there, the mother continuously quarreled her to go town and look for men so that she can get money which can support them something that this girl opposed. We got message and sent Millicent to go and save this child and now the girl is very happy in the orphanage and a main actress in our Drama club in Island of hope school.
The major challenge we have is feeding programme,we are working on activities to sustain feeding. One of the programmes we have tried and worked for us.
Farming
We have a school garden where we grow vegetables, maize and fruits. Some of the things we grow are attached below
Fish farming
The government of Kenya through the Ministry of Fisheries made for us the fish pond and over one thousand fingerlings of Tilapia fish was put in eight months we started using the fish. The fish from the pond and the products from the farm were very useful last term. Last term we managed to close the school without debts, something which has been recurring over the years. The government realizes that we managed the pond well and they were over excited when they came for the first sampling and they gave us another pond. The fish in this pond will be ready in January.
Some of the programmes we have in mind but we have not realized are
- Large scale crop farming
- Large scale poultry farming
- Rabbit farming
- Cross breed dairy farming under zero grazing for milk production
These programmes can go a long way in sustaining the feeding programme and other areas of running the orphanage.
Joash Okongo
