Saving livelihoods during pandemic

For hundreds of thousands of Kenyans living in informal settlements in urban centres, a lack of basic needs became synonymous with their lives when Covid-19 hit them last March, throwing the residents into even more destitution.

In a lockdown period when schools and churches were closed, and travel restricted, the struggling families found it tougher surviving the harsh economic conditions, as breadwinners lost jobs and were forced to adhere to the ‘stay-at-home’ government directive.

Not knowing where and when to get the next meal tormented them, but food donations from the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), non-profit organisations, the government and well-wishers kept them alive and kicking.

“Covid-19 has caused untold suffering especially to families living in poor urban areas who normally rely on informal day-to-day employment. Many families in the coastal region are struggling just to feed themselves,” said Lauren Landis, WFP’s Kenya Country Director during an event in Mombasa last October, where 24,000 families received Sh4,000 each to cushion them from hunger.

At the height of the pandemic, the government also issued a Sh2,000 stipend to slum dwellers in Nairobi.

Sister Mary Killeen, the director of Mukuru Promotion Centre at Mukuru Kayaba, Nairobi, says the lockdown period was a busy one, working day and night to find well-wishers to help her stock food in preparation for schools reopening.

When the government announced the resumption of in-person learning on January 4, 2021, parents in Nairobi’s slum zones of Mukuru-Kayaba, Mukuru-kwa-Njenga and Mukuru-kwa-Reuben were hopeful about the stay of their children at the centre.

When Business Daily visited the education centre at lunch time, primary, secondary and vocational learners were taking rice, beans and vegetables. “There is a lot of suffering on the part of parents because they cannot afford rent, school fees, food and basic needs at the same time. This is a low-income area with a high school dropout rate and many under-age pregnancies,” said Sr Killeen.

From 1976 to 1989 when she was the headteacher of Our Lady of Mercy Primary School South B, she narrates that many street gangs operated in the then upcoming Mukuru slums, robbing pupils of school uniforms, bags and shoes.

“Many children would cry to me that they had been surrounded by a gang of 14 street boys that stole everything from them, including undergarments. There was abject poverty then,” she explains.

She was moved by such actions, and when her bosses from Ireland visited Nairobi in 1984, she requested the creation of a new education centre to take care of poor and sickly children.

REHAB PROGRAMME

“I had already taken some of the children from the slums and absorbed them in my school, dominated by children of civil servants. Because they were older, and had skin diseases like scabies, ringworms and tapeworms which they were spreading to other children, these parents were not happy.”

She would start the journey of establishing the Mukuru Promotion Centre in 1985, depending on donors in both the public and private sectors.

The school she started 35 years ago now boasts a capacity of more than 6,000 pupils across four primary schools, 400 students in secondary school and 200 in vocational training, all learning for free.

“We also have 70 boys in our rehabilitation programme. These are straight from the street and are too street wild to join class. They have been rescued from drugs and crime and need to be counselled and guided first. Then we have 87 who are living with disabilities,” she reveals.

The government provides teachers while the institution takes care of 140 employees who are cooks, grounds men, cleaners and security guards.

But what is more concerning to Sr Killeen is that the economic situation of the 1980s is creeping back to the slums, partly due to the economic strife caused by the pandemic and the 2018 Kenya government’s policy to take over WFP programme of feeding 1.6 million vulnerable school children.

Dubbed Home-Grown School Meals programme, the government project targeted to offer free lunch for every pupil in 4,000 schools, but failed on that promise, landing poor families into financial distress, despite setting aside Sh2.4 billion for the cause in the 2018/19 financial year.

It is in that situation that the institution partnered with Kenya Wine Agencies Limited (Kwal) to boost provision of food and basic necessities to children in school and skills to Form Four leavers.

“They know when they are in school, they have something to eat compared to when they are at home. But the numbers are soaring, that is why we are looking for aid even in the corporate world,” she says.

Kwal is providing food stuff and financial aid in its social responsibility goal of boosting inclusion through equipping vocational trainees with skills that can generate self-employment.

Lina Githuka, Kwal managing director, said part of the wine maker’s corporate promise is to ensure everyone lives a fulfilling life, especially in the communities it operates in.

VOCATIONAL TRAINING

“We enhanced our community support with Mukuru Promotion Centre in the wake of the pandemic and extended our help in the provision of basic commodities to cushion the vulnerable families living in informal settlements,” she said.

Through the institution, Sr Killeen discloses that during the peak of the coronavirus where many breadwinners lost jobs, Kwal donated hundreds of food baskets to families for two months, besides training catering students from the area on food and beverage.

“Because we are located near Industrial Area, we are lucky to place our vocational graduates to jobs in masonry, plumbing, electrical installation and computer training,” she says.

According to the 2020 Fingo Kenya Private Sector Partnerships for Sustainable Report, 3,028 of the total 8,893 active non-governmental organisations contributed Sh166 billion to the economy in 2019.

The survey notes that NGOs' nature of providing services across a vast range of areas such as water and sanitation, food and nutrition, education, employment, and healthcare proved crucial during the pandemic, where many families were rendered hopeless after 1.7 million jobs were lost in three months to June during the lockdown period, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

“Through partnerships with the private sector, NGOs can leverage the contribution of the private sector to address complex development and humanitarian challenges and promote the sustainable and inclusive business models that ensure the world’s most under-privileged get access to improved livelihoods and services,” states the Fingo report.

Private companies, the research points out, are always looking for opportunities to reach a different segment of their core market base but lack the means and insights needed for entry.

“NGOs have expertise in community development and use it to raise awareness of development-related issues linked to the business. This engagement with business often demystifies socio-economic factors, which affect business but are outside of the realms of core business knowledge and skills.”

NGOs contribute knowledge and skills to help develop supply chains to become more sustainable by working with the private sector to integrate and mainstream business practices.

IMPACT LABS

Additionally, start-ups are fast embracing collaborations that enable them to strengthen their business models, and scale up their products and services to be more valuable than engagements that steer them from their core business.

In the case of GetBoda, a Kenyan start-up that is focusing on technology to improve last-mile logistics in Kenya, its partnership with Mercy Corps' Youth Impact Labs has enabled them to enhance their operational and technical capacity thanks to expertise provided by the programme.

“For Get Boda, looking beyond the bottom line is critical to ensuring that we deliver value beyond profits. We see NGOs as key partners in helping us bring this impact perspective to our work,” notes Andrew Miller, the CEO of GetBoda.

But according to Miora Randriambeloma, the Africa business development and partnerships director at KaiOS Technologies, partner engagement takes time for any start-up, since it requires talking with every team, including the innovation, the partnerships and the business desks for them to understand what they can do with your product.

“We learn as much as our potential partners do through this process. Because we are a relatively new company, we get many questions around our sustainability. It takes time to build trust.”