Action for Children in Conflict (AfCiC) have been working in Thika, Kenya for around five years. The town of Thika is some 40km north east of Nairobi and has a population of around 88,000. Over recent years it has had a serious problem with a growing number of children living on its streets due to family breakdown, sexual and physical abuse, crime and drug addiction.
AfCiC runs a day care centre for street children and a residential interim care centre where boys from the streets undergo a rehabilitation programme aimed at reintroducing them back to a stable lifestyle, through reuniting them with their families, returning them to school or finding permanent employment.
To date AfCiC has been very successful and the number of children on Thika's streets has halved from 400 to 200. They also work closely with local schools, with a food programme, and have a busy legal team specialising in child-related legal cases.
Their workload has increased significantly during 2008 because of the large number of displaced persons in the Thika area following the post election troubles and the AfCiC team have been busy providing support to families affected. This has included providing uniforms so that the children can attend school and a micro finance scheme giving loans to help start small businesses.
Vesper first worked with AfCiC in 2005 when, to mark Rotary's centenary, we helped fund the interim care centre in its first full year of operation.Vesper first worked with AfCiC in 2005 when, to mark Rotary's centenary, we helped fund the interim care centre in its first full year of operation. Since then our members have visited Thika on several occasions spending time with the children and visiting the various projects. We have provided the charity with several laptops to help with their operations and given funding to help support AfCiC's work with displaced persons.
If you would like to learn more about the work done by AfCiC and perhaps give some support, you can visit the AfCiC website.