Contaminated water can be linked to the transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, and hepatitis A; among others. Without clean water, communities are exposed to these preventable and sometimes deadly health risks. Bringing clean water into 58 households (guardians for our SHARE Orphans) in the Homa Bay Community not only helps reduce these risks among our sponsored orphans and their families, but also allows the community to focus on other needs.
One of the SHARE initiatives to help the Homa Bay Community is to bring clean water into the homes of our Orphan Guardians who normally house the SHARE Orphans when boarding school is out for a few weeks a year and holidays. Due to COVID, the guardians have now been housing the students full time since April. We hope to bring fresh water to all SHARE Africa Guardian homes in the near future, and SHARE will use the feedback from this initial roll out before full deployment into all the homes. During the December 2019 board trip to Africa, Board directors Pat Esgate and Brenda Reichelderfer did confirm the orphans were receiving treated clean water at the boarding schools they visited, but until the orphans can return to the school, having the filters in the guardians homes will continue to provide them clean drinking water.
A second project in the works is being done jointly with the West Nyack Rotary group. The goal of the project will be to drill a well at the Double Joy Orphanage, an organization SHARE has been highly instrumental in supporting through various donations and projects. This orphanage is having financial sustainability issues as the ever-increasing droughts cause the rainwater capture systems to run dry and they then have to purchase water – sometimes in place of medicine and food. Unfortunately, in the midst of the recent COVID crisis, the project has been delayed.
Also, during the December 2019 board trip, SHARE Africa hosted an Orphans and Guardian Inspirational Home Coming Event. The SHARE US board members along with the Kenyan SHARE Africa board brought together inspirational speakers and past SHARE sponsored orphans to speak to the current orphans about life after graduation. The audience was over 400, including all of the SHARE programs 250 current orphans, many of the orphan guardians, and several graduates of the SHARE program. During this event SHARE brought in the sales and training team from Uzima Filters, who spoke to the orphans and guardians about the new filters. The Uzima team then gave a demonstration on how the filters worked and how they could be used in their homes.
SHARE’s mission is to save lives, foster a sustainable future, and vastly improve the quality of life of children and adults in African communities. SHARE’s projects are focused on Kenya’s Homa Bay County in the West, right on Lake Victoria; a region in critical need of help due to its extremely high incidence of AIDS, abject poverty, geographical remoteness, and lack of health care and social support infrastructure.
The SHARE Orphan Sponsorship (SOS) program has helped several thousand orphans lay the groundwork for a more stable and healthy future in Homa Bay with many of them returning and contributing to the community after higher education! Currently, there are 249 orphans being sponsored. To learn how you can help by sponsoring an orphan or contributing to some of SHARE community programs, visit our donation page
Making a difference!!!!!