Ember Kenya Grandparents
Description
By helping grandparents in Kenya to improve their own economic situations, the program benefits children as well, showing them that someone loves them and will care for them until they are able to care for themselves.
Currently Ember works with 815 grandparent families caring for about 3,000 children. Through micro-lending, health education, and building a network, grandparents become sustainable providers better able to care for their grandchildren.
Currently Ember works with 815 grandparent families caring for about 3,000 children. Through micro-lending, health education, and building a network, grandparents become sustainable providers better able to care for their grandchildren.
Mission
--Losing one parent and then another.
--Aunts and uncles so frightened by the stigma of AIDS that they refuse to help.
--Boys and girls not knowing who will care for them.
--Stunned with grief and uncertainty.
--Fear like they've never known before. Abandoned.
--And then grandparents step in to take the children into their home.
This is the story of hundreds of thousands of AIDS orphans throughout all of Africa. The Ember Kenya Grandparents Empowerment Project works in Funyula, Samia district, in western Kenya to help the grandparents so that the children will benefit once again from a loving family home. The Ember Project is about families; it's about children. It's about creating stability in a country torn asunder by AIDS and poverty.
--Aunts and uncles so frightened by the stigma of AIDS that they refuse to help.
--Boys and girls not knowing who will care for them.
--Stunned with grief and uncertainty.
--Fear like they've never known before. Abandoned.
--And then grandparents step in to take the children into their home.
This is the story of hundreds of thousands of AIDS orphans throughout all of Africa. The Ember Kenya Grandparents Empowerment Project works in Funyula, Samia district, in western Kenya to help the grandparents so that the children will benefit once again from a loving family home. The Ember Project is about families; it's about children. It's about creating stability in a country torn asunder by AIDS and poverty.
History
In the case of The Ember Kenya Grandparents Empowerment Project, the vision was that of one man, Dr. Robert Barasa, who decided to try implementing the premise of his doctoral dissertation. He believed that poverty in Kenya can be substantially alleviated by enabling the grandparent caregivers of AIDS orphans to upgrade their standard of living by becoming economically, psychologically, and spiritually self-sufficient.
Dr. Barasa gathered together an ecumenical advisory board, at first mostly from Northminster Presbyterian Church in Evanston, Illinois who believed with him that people who could learn to help themselves would be better able to care for the children in the long term.
Through these few people, the Ember Kenya project received $35,000 as seed money from the Northminster congregation of less than 650 members. This was a large amount from this congregation, but a small amount in terms of what was needed for a startup. Yet, these Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans also felt the vision that this was something that they wanted to do.
Dr. Barasa gathered together an ecumenical advisory board, at first mostly from Northminster Presbyterian Church in Evanston, Illinois who believed with him that people who could learn to help themselves would be better able to care for the children in the long term.
Through these few people, the Ember Kenya project received $35,000 as seed money from the Northminster congregation of less than 650 members. This was a large amount from this congregation, but a small amount in terms of what was needed for a startup. Yet, these Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans also felt the vision that this was something that they wanted to do.
Contact: Ben Buettell
Title:Chair, Ember Kenya Advisory Board
Email: bbuettell@emberkenya.org
Web Site: http://www.emberkenya.org/index.htm
Address:
2515 Central Park Ave.
Evanston, IL 60201
Programs Offered:
Access to Healthcare
In rural Western Kenya, access to health care is almost non-existent for a large share of the population. There are hospitals in some of the larger towns and in the cities, but the rural poor cannot get there, because their only means of transportati ... Read More
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Economic Self-Sufficiency
Micro-loans are at the heart of the Ember Project. Grandparents decide for themselves what is feasible in beginning a small business for themselves. Ember helps them to choose what they might do to earn money for themselves so they can afford to rais ... Read More
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Grandparents Working Together
From living in rural isolation believing that they were alone in their struggles to provide for grandchildren, the Ember grandparents are now organized into groups where they find support from each other. Read More