Success Story

January 2011 marked a new beginning for 27-year-old Robert Mwenda. When his parents passed away during his childhood he was forced to drop out of school and fend for himself by doing odd jobs. The streets became his new home and other street children the only family he knew. Destitute and dejected, Mwenda had to postpone his dreams indefinitely.

Romanos Opato, a farmer in his late thirties and father of two, splits his time between the farm and the kitchen.

This is since he discovered a creative way of converting one of his new food crops to delicious pastries and other locally popular dishes. The orange-fleshed sweet potato, which he started growing in early 2011 through his farmer group, is his secret ingredient for the nutritious dishes described as ‘superior tasting’ by his customers.

“Three years back, the school would spend 400 shillings per day (US $5) to buy water and absenteeism was high,” says John Masime the principal at Mariwa mixed secondary school in Kisumu. With great need for access to clean water and a commitment from the local leaders and the community at large, Millennium Water Alliance, with funding from USAID, set up a community water project at the Mariwa School.

Asha Adan, a mother of five boys, has farmed in the arid north of Kenya’s Coast Province for the past 15 years, producing mostly fruit crops and, more recently, rearing cattle. She is the Secretary of the Al-Mukaram farm, near the bridge that connects Garissa and Madogo. The group farm has 50 members, 20 women and 30 men, and 192 acres of land of which about 56 are currently under cultivation.

A devout Muslim who seeks knowledge, Asha traveled to Garissa District to visit a fodder production demonstration plot at the Al-Rahma farm.

The irony that you could be starving as your neighbor wonders where to take his excess food was a problem that bothered APHIAplus Kamili’s (AK) Care and Treatment team leader, Dr.

Two years ago, 21-year-old Beatrice Kasina was a struggling fish seller on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Victoria. Seventeen-year-old Ruth Otieno was unemployed and fully dependent on the meager income of her fisherman husband. Twenty-three-year-old Susan Opiyo, a single mother of two, was hawking tiny fish, called omena, by the road-side, desperate for motorists to stop and buy so she could feed her young children.

Christine Robi smiles as she holds her new born baby during a post-natal visit at Iraha dispensary in Moheto, Kuria West district. Although she has had seven previous pregnancies, four of her children succumbed to common child hood diseases and infections soon after birth. But this 41 year old mother is not worried about the survival of the latest addition to her family because for the first time she delivered at a health center with the help of skilled attendants who gave both mother and daughter full treatment and information to promote health.

Trash is cash. If you find that hard to believe, just ask the 40 registered groups that work with the Bamato Environmental and Sanitation Project in Kisumu. The groups, which are mostly comprised of urban dwellers, have found ingenious ways of making a living while cleaning up their neighborhoods through waste management strategies.

Bamato is an acronym derived from three Swahili words: ‘baba’ (father), ‘mama’ (mother), and ‘toto’ (child), capturing the need for an inclusive approach in tackling social and environmental issues in the lake region.

The next time you buy an organic oil product from any of The Body Shop stores around the world, a farmer in Mt Kenya may be smiling all the way to the bank. The US-based cosmetic giant that manufactures natural and ethical products has signed an agreement with Earth Oil Extracts, a local company in Kenya, for the supply of tea tree oil.

Many people turn to churches, mosques and other places of worship for advice and consolation in times of need and safety in time of danger.

APHIAplus is collaborating with religious leaders of 14 denominations to spread messages on HIV prevention and care for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), in Nandi East District.