The Action Foundation Jan -Jun 2022 Newsletter

The Action Foundation Half Year Updates

A group photo of the TAF team during a staff retreat

Dear friends and partners, The Action Foundation is proud to share with you what we have achieved in the past six months. In line with our 2022-26 strategic plan, we continue to see tremendous growth across our programs. We are breaking down barriers that have held children, women, and girls with disabilities back from accessing opportunities that will allow them to thrive in their future. We've enrolled 192 additional children into our Nurturing Care (Tunza) Program and trained over 800 girls with disabilities in coding, robotics, and app development. In addition, we have scaled our Ibuka Girls in STEM initiative to Special Secondary Schools across the country by partnering with Google.org, Girls Opportunity Alliance, and The Ministry of Education Directorate of Special Needs Education. We're excited to announce the addition of three program leads to our team and their roles in supporting our Women and Girl Empowerment (Ibuka), STEM, and Inclusive Education (Somesha) Programs. We are grateful to our community and excited about what we have planned for the rest of 2022. Join us on our journey!  Maria Omare, Founder & Executive Director, The Action Foundation.

Updates Improving access to health services for children with disabilities in Nairobi One of our top priorities is improving access to health services for young children with disabilities in informal settlements. We held a medical camp in Mathare that provided one-stop disability assessments, educational assessments, and pediatric, optical, and dental services for 177 children with disabilities. This improved accessibility by reducing the financial and accessibility barriers caregivers experience when seeking these crucial services. Read this blog post by Victor Ligaya, the Head of Therapy at The Action Foundation, and watch the medical camp video.

Promoting Inclusive Early Childhood Care and Education We are always on the lookout for innovative ways to support inclusive early years care and education programs. In partnership with the Tawingo Fund, we are creating workshops that focus on responsive, inclusive, and child-centered caregiving for children with disabilities (CWDs). We need your help to fill out the following survey to identify key topics for our online and in-person workshops! It shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes to complete. As an organization that strives to build inclusive communities, we’re proud to have been able to provide consultancy services for Mothers 2 Mothers and the African Population & Health Research Centre (APHRC). This involved developing training manuals on inclusive early childhood care and education, developing and incorporating childhood disability content in existing manuals, and training community health volunteers Enabling fathers’ involvement in caregiving We continue to focus on our objective of ensuring male engagement in our project activities. We shared our approach to engaging fathers with peers and practitioners at a Learning Workshop on Responsive Caregiving convened by Comic Relief. We believe this will enhance the quality of care children with disabilities receive and continue to shift mindsets and attitudes toward positive parenting from all caregivers, regardless of gender.  Child-friendly Schools projects  As part of our Caregiving and Safeguarding of CWDs in Informal Settlements Project, we work with schools in low-resource communities to create child-friendly environments which ensure the safety of children and promote the inclusion of children with disabilities. We supported eight school heads to implement initiatives to make their schools more inclusive. The schools built ramps, established school feeding and income-generating projects through animal husbandry and kitchen farming, and acquired learning resources.

After-school STEM workshop at Kibarani School for the Deaf, Kilifi County.

Ibuka Girls in STEM Initiative The Ibuka Girls in STEM Initiative aims to expand economic opportunities for girls with disabilities through STEM boot camps and mentorship. In partnership with Google.org, we have trained 48 teachers and held STEM boot camps in Kibera and 12 partner schools across Kenya, reaching a total of 800 girls. Additionally, the Girls Opportunity Alliance has supported us to establish a community hub in Kilifi county and reach 300 girls with disabilities in a community with one of the highest school dropout rates for adolescent girls. We are inspired by girls like Mildred who are developing their own ideas and making them happen. Mildred, a 16-year-old high school student who developed a physical disability following complications from an illness, is working hard, with support from the team, to develop a telemedicine app. We continue to imagine a world where girls with disabilities are successful coders and engineers! Ibuka scholars Initiative We made progress this half-year by renewing our commitment to breaking the barriers to education for girls with disabilities through our Scholar Initiative. Through the initiative, we are promoting an increased transition to secondary schools for girls with disabilities who face barriers to advancing to higher levels of education. With the support from the Amplify Girls Education and Innovation Fund, we increased the number of girls with disabilities transitioning from primary to secondary school from 7 to 20. Legal aid services for women with disabilities In Kenya, women and girls with disabilities face significant barriers to accessing justice, due to discrimination on the basis of both gender and disability, accessibility barriers to the justice system, and lack of reasonable accommodations throughout judicial proceedings. We held a legal aid clinic for women with disabilities from Kibera and Kawangware informal settlements to address these challenges. The exercise was conducted by Commissioner Lawrence Mute from the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, Hon. Jane Ocharo, Deputy Registrar, The Judiciary, Betty Nkirote, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya, and other paralegals and legal assistants. This clinic was conducted in collaboration with various partners including Womenstrong International, local practitioners, and community members.

Meet the team

Meet Juliet Mwongeli, the Ibuka Mentorship Initiative Lead at The Action Foundation. Her role entails planning and implementing activities related to the mentorship of adolescent girls with disabilities, coordinating a team of mentors, seeking opportunities for mentors and mentees, and organizing home and school visits for girls in the program.

A typical work day for Juliet comprises developing activity plans, mobilizing mentors and other community actors to participate in events, attending planning meetings with colleagues, and drafting reports.   As a woman with a disability, Juliet is passionate about her work and is proud of her growth since she joined The Action Foundation in 2021 as a mentor. Juliet is a healthy eating enthusiast who enjoys growing her own food. In addition, she is a Pioneer Kenyan Female Para Triathlete, having represented Kenya at sporting events in Belgium. She swims (750m), bicycles (20km), and runs 5km.

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