Once again – a bit of a time-lag from my last post – I am not long back from a trip to Kenya. I would have loved to have blogged whilst I was there – but somehow in amongst my hectic work schedule I never quite found time. Disappointing.
Still I want to share with you a visit that I made to Little Rock – an early childhood development centre in Kibera slum. Kibera has the dubious honour of being Africa’s 2nd largest informal settlements. (Soweto in South Africa has the top spot). The children at Little Rock are from poor families – some are orphans or have family members affected by the HIV pandemic. There are also disabled and deaf children. As I looked round the tiny classrooms at children keen to learn and share with us what they had learnt, it struck me that the combination of disability and poverty is a deadly one and that organisations like Little Rock are doing vital work.
Without the work of Little Rock, I wondered how many of these deaf children would have had access to so much language. How many of them would have been able to communicate with us in such a lively and enthusiastic way? Early Childhood Development centres provide nursery education but also provide basic health services and nutritious food. Attending one of these centres can be life changing for any children from one of the 1:5 Kenyan families that can’t meet their basic food needs or from the 1.2million who infected with HIV.
Poverty itself is disabling. But what about the children who come from one of those families and have a disability? Where family resources are already overstretched, parents might not have time to do anything other than survive – so learning Sign Language, or spending time helping their disabled children with feeding, toileting or exercises might not be a priority. Little Rock helps children who would otherwise, in many cases, be isolated, hungry and not in school. But in Little Rock, there is hope for the future. The centre nourishes their bodies and their minds and if education really is one of the routes out of poverty, these kids will have a better start than many.
As I left, I thought about meeting the same kids in 20 years time… I wonder what the future holds for them? I can only hope that by supporting organisations like Little Rock, Deaf Child Worldwide can make it a bit brighter.
