MURERA AIDS PREVENTION AND SUPPORT GROUP

Project goals

Bringing hope to orphans, vulnerable children and widows by enabling them to attain improved living as well as mobilize resources that will cater for the needs of these vulnerable groups in terms of poverty reduction, illiteracy and increase their productivity in the society.

Project objectives

* To provide opportunities for economic self-sufficiency from an individual level through to a communal level attending to the source of eradicate poverty.
* To provide opportunities for orphans to find care and affirmation in a loving environment.
* To provide a potential for children to have an opportunity for education, vocational skills training or micro-enterprise initiatives to support and enhance more self-reliant living.
* To enhance, in a sustainable agricultural crop and animal farming in order to alleviate poverty, hunger and malnutrition (improve food security) and enhance people?s incomes.
* To develop local capacities and foster policies and institutional mechanisms that would enable and empower individuals and communities to secure sustainable livelihoods through vocational education to the target groups.
* Empowering people through community development by way of income-generating projects and small business development and training.

Purpose of the Project

In many parts of Thika district here in Kenya, female-headed households are usually poorer and fewer rural female-headed households own agricultural productive resources. For these women, combining farm and non-farm income-earning activities has long been a survival strategy which allows them to reduce the risk of starvation for themselves and their families during periods of chronic or transitory food insecurity.

In terms of agricultural production and improving rural livelihoods in the context of HIV/AIDS, illiteracy leads to inability to understand and adopt new technologies, accessing credit, accessing HIV/AIDS prevention messages, inability to know their rights and support mechanisms that are available.

The major gender related impacts of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods includes: increased workload of women due to HIV/AIDS related morbidity and mortality of family members thereby affecting their role in agricultural production and securing livelihoods, loss of non-farm income, loss of assets and decreased access to resources, collapsing rural safety nets leading to increased burden of caring for orphans, increased vulnerability of women to loss of rights to land and property, withdrawal of girl children from school. Because they are overburdened, women no longer have time for non-farm activities such as artisan crafts, market gardening, food processing and others, activities that previously contributed to the family budget. This negatively impacts on their livelihood.
The purpose of this project is to support these vulnerable populations in a wide range of areas, including economic, material, emotional, and legal protection. Economic empowerment of women through provision of training and supporting income generating activities which will include activities that will help these women generate income that will help them support their families. To ensure that we have completely won the war on poverty, we will offer training and supporting bigger orphans, widows and grand mothers with small income generating activities that will make them independent even after our support is over and this will help them support other family members. This kind of support will help them in sending their children left under their care in schools and this will reduce the level of illiteracy and poverty.

Secondly malnutrition contributes to more than half of all under-five childhood deaths throughout the developing world and especially here in Thika district. The associated effects of poverty, inadequate household access to food, infectious disease, and inadequate breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices often lead to illness, growth faltering, nutrient deficiencies, delayed development, and death, particularly during the first two years of life and orphans going to the streets since those living with them are not able to provide them with food or other basic needs. We will support these foster families with seeds and train them on new methods of farming that will ensure they have plenty of food for their families and for the market hence reduce food insecurity.

Thirdly, the project will be prioritizing resources permitting, promotion of practical and intellectual skill development. A Vocational training center is important building block. It will provide these people with realistic chances for the future on their way to being independent. Through vocational training Centers, the project will offer fair starting possibilities to with an aim of poverty and illiteracy reduction.