Our Programs

Our Program Areas.

EDUCATION

This is one of our key pillars as an organization. Our efforts are geared towards ensuring equitable quality education within our communities. Education as a fundamental human right also has the ability to present lifelong opportunities to individuals. For every child, it gives them an equal opportunity to grow and thrive. This forms our main area since we advocate for early childhood education and find solutions to illiteracy in marginalized communities.
Early Childhood Education is crucial since we understand the importance of early years of a child. A child’s early years are crucial for brain development and growth in general.Education  also forms a basis of shaping one's worldview.  . We work with marginalized and vulnerable communities to ensure that we bridge the gaps that hinder early childhood education. This is through building pre-schools, offering learning materials and employing qualified teachers who are from the specific  community to enhance quality learning for young children in these communities.

Through the support of House of Prayers Ministry in Oberhausen Germany, we were able to build the pre-school. We constructed a classroom, provided desks and employed teachers in Osiligi pre-school. The community was super receptive and their contribution was land in which the classroom was built.

Through this initiative, there has been an increase the number of small children enrolled in the pre-school. The pre-school hosts over 30 children who are in our sponsorship program. It has two teachers, Mr Abel Ntuyoto & Mr. Mailogy Turere who are from Osiligi community and now impact knowledge to the younger generation. Village economic empowerment also offers support through paying their salaries while the parents cater for school expenses such as examination costs. It is easier now for the parents. We also support the pre-school with learning materials that are not easily accessible to them in order to boost the early years of learning for the children.

CHILD SPONSORSHIP

Children form an integral part of our society, their presence means a growing generation and a future to hope for. Our help to a specific child uses the approach of a maximum social benefit where the family benefits from the program. This is program that we run in partnership with ORA-Kinderhilfe.

We work with over 450 children in Kinale, Karangatha and Ilbisil in Kenya. Our call is to ensure that these children grow and develop to become self reliant individuals in the future.

Through this program a child, a holistic difference is in the child’s life and the community as a whole. The transformation can be seen through our regular updates. Our sponsors receive photos and letters from the children. With this it is easier to monitor and evaluate their progress. The child grows in a happier and safeguarded environment, messages from sponsors bring hope and enhanced self confidence.

What the Child Sponsorship program entails

Through sponsoring a child, we are safeguarding a family’s welfare/well being and in return a community’s well being. Each of our sponsored child’s family receives help through;
Employment Opportunities
Through capacity building trainings, families gain access to skills in upscaling their farming techniques and day to day paying jobs at our project farms (training grounds).

In Kinale, we have  more than 150 families that we work with. We empower these families through day to day jobs at the project farms that earns them daily wages.The project farms are the training grounds for these families. We train them on sustainable farming practices such as organic farming in order for them to increase their yields as well as earn income.

In Karangatha, we have  97 families that we work with. The approach is similar to what happens in Kinale. Our call in these two areas is to impact change by boosting their main economic activity which is farming.
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Investment and Stock

Even as we empower communities economically, we also ensure that they are organized and well aware as they make their financial decisions. This includes planning, organizing and controlling of their financial activities as they earn an income. Through this need VILSA SACCO LIMITED was born.

VILSA SACCO has been in operation since 2018. Its main aim has been to empower its members to accumulate savings and thereafter provide them with credit at fair and reasonable rates so as to keep improving their soci0-economic status.

VILSA’s objectives include;

  1. Provide members an opportunity to accumulate savings for a better future.
  2. Offer members a broad range of credit facilities at fair and reasonable interest rates.
  3. Increase access to financial wellness and services to members and their communities
  4. Ensure safety and soundness of members’ funds through wise investment while applying good governance structures

Through this initiative, our community members are able to save as individuals as well as in their groups. VILSA has managed to recruit 60 members and has a current share capital of KES 150,OOO. The total amount of loans given to members is KES 159,347 and total current savings is 378,404.

The future for VILSA is to spread out its wings through thorough mobilization of savings, offer affordable and innovative financial services that will empower members hence gaining economic freedom. VILSA also aims to train its members on financial literacy so as to help them make wise financial decisions in accordance to its objectives.

SPEC

SPEC is a Latin word that means look at something or examine. This is a movement born out of rich African inheritance whose dream is for every family to live a sustainable and self determined life as members of the Kingdom of God. It stands for spiritual, personal, economic and community empowerment that VEE follows through while working to create independent and self reliant societies.

S- Spiritual Empowerment Discipleship-Training. This is actualised in our Partnership with Generosity Path Movement.

P- Personal Empowerment. This is achieved through the  Child Sponsorship program which is inclined towards supporting families and their occupation activities).

E- Economic Empowerment. This is achieved through Occupational training Financial Management Ventures that creates transformation within their context thus expanding, improving, advancing and adopting new technology in achieving their goal leading to  increased  income productivity).

C- Community Empowerment. This gears towards Developing infrastructure that create a change within a community that addresses a Need resulting to sustainable and accountable economically developing  cycle managed by the community for the community).

SPEC’S WAY (ideology)

SPEC seeks like minded  partners that views to empowerment in all angles, to restore human dignity and value by addressing inequality ,poverty ,oppression, inclusity,ignorance and injustices within communities. Its a call of unity where families form communities that thrive and are transformed . As a movement we aspire  to bundle these resources, increase our know-how and innovation, develop this ideology  that embraces our common faith and beliefs of a better free and safe communities for all. SPEC’s dedication is not just to change the life of people in our communities, but change their hearts and mind so that they again will become the agents of change for their families and communities. SPEC as a movement  principle is  impactful wholistic Kingdom empowerment.                                                                                                                                          

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PUBLIC HYGIENE

Water, Sanitation and basic hygiene is our approach that goes hand in hand with health as our pillar . This approach ensures that families within our communities inculcate sanitation and hygiene techniques in their daily lives.

Our method of doing this is through;
  1. Trainings to increase awareness among the community members on public health. Our first step is to ensure that our communities understand and acknowledge their various sources of water and the kind of contamination that each of them has. Through the acknowledgement, they are able to resonate and see the various health risks that come about with their different water sources.
  2. We also help them in identifying the various water treatment mechanisms that they can employ in order for them to have clean and safe water in their homesteads.

Under sanitation we help our communitie in describing the cycle of contaminations, how to break the cycle as well as advocating for behavioural change in sanitation and hygiene. Hygiene for us is to ensure that families describe the challenges that they encounter while aiming to achieve good hygiene practices and efficient ways to overcome them. We drive communities to understanding that sanitation and hygiene is linked nutrition and health.

We are currently training the Ilbisil community on water, sanitation, hygiene and nutrition. This goes hand in hand with training on bucket farming for fifty families in our program. The main goal for this is to ensure that even as they learn how to grow vegetable in their manyattas they can as well maintain cleanliness for instance as they cook and the vegetables among other home essential doings/aspects.

HEALTH

Our value for productivity and well being is unmatched. This unfolds in one of our key areas of concern which is health. We value the social, mental and physical well being of our communities in order to enhance tier productivity and self sustenance. Health for us takes three dimensions;
  1. Awareness,
  2. Access
  3. Facilitation.

Quality health care is critical to each and every person  yet most of our communities face various barriers which hinders awareness, access and facilitation of their health.

Awareness is achieved through holding health education programs to enhance public awareness and general well being. Our awareness strategies matches each community’s needs.
We ensure Access to health care for our communities through mobile clinics that go to the community. Through this communities have been able to get regular screenings and other health care needs addressed. Regular mobile clinics bridge the gap of inaccessibility of health care service in our communities due to proximity.

Facilitation comes in through offering medical covers to communities. We recognize other factors like finances that limit healthcare access. We have adopted National Health Insurance Fund Self care policies for the families in our communities. These are paid monthly until a family is stable enough to continue paying for their insurance cover. Our call to action in health is not limited since we also act on emergencies and urgent health care occurrences within the communities. We ensure that each of the families involved in this get immediate health care facilitation. It varies from paying off their health care insurance arrears and clearing any outstanding issues with their insurance cards.

Our main goals for health care in our communities is to ensure that they are aware of various underlying health risks (health literacy), ensure access to quality and affordable health care services. This intertwines with our overall goal of creating independent and self reliant communities.  

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FOOD SECURITY

Food security is fundamental for human survival. Being food secure means access to sufficient, clean and nutritious food that meets the needs and preferences of an individual. This is such that it does not impair them from leading an active and healthy life. Our work towards food security is to ensure human physical, social emotional and cognitive development throughout their life course.
Our communities in Kinale and Karangatha are farmers while in Ilbisil they are pastoralists.From generation to generation our farmers have been using the same conventional methods in crop and livestock production. Over the years their yields have gone down or even remained the same. The insufficient yields also end up going bad due to lack of storage facilities. They are forced to sell their produce at throw away prices to the middlemen. Most times they consume their harvest within the first three months to avoid wastage.

Our pastoralist community in Ilbisil, have been concentrating on livestock production, moving from one area to another in search of pasture and water. Farming is a relatively new phenomenon to this community and their meals partially includes vegetables. These necessitated our call towards food security.

In a bid to enhance food security, VEE through its implementing partner CBK has made various steps to ensure that these communities to move towards the same trajectory.

Various reports and studies in one of our areas, Kiambu County, that shows the effects of Genetically Modified Foods on maternal health and infants has necessitated our move to purely organic. Through offering training and giving our farmers incentives such as fertilizer and start-up capital,we are ensuring that our communities produce safe and healthy food.
 
In Kinari, the main crops grown are cabbages, carrots, potatoes, green peas and spinach. We have constructed a cold room that can carry up to 50 tonnes of potatoes. This is a storage facility that helps our farmers store their potatoes at a pay for a longer period of time without them going bad.

In Karangatha, the crops grown are similar to those in Kinari. VEE has constructed a potato seed store. This is where potatoes that will later be used as seeds in the next season, are stored.  We also ensure that our communities have access to extension services all through the seasons. This is through various agronomist visits that they have whenever they are in need. Our partners International Partnerships Services East Africa Limited (IPSEA) offer organic farming training to our farmers.