All of us at Kite-Nairobi continue to work hard and remain dedicated to delivering the Covid-19 emergency food baskets to our mentees and their families for support. We have been working with a number of families and each month we find new and innovative ways of helping more families. This month has been extremely difficult as we had to deal with an unexpected turn of events. The ideal plan was to handpick a considerable number of families for whom we could provide a monthly food basket to help them through the hard times that the pandemic has caused.
However, at the beginning of this month, quite unexpectedly, two more families showed up despite not being short-listed for the baskets. We had to come up with a way to incorporate them into our food delivery basket scheme, as we want to help as many families as possible. Our Kite Nairobi Co-Director Patricia, visited these families and engaged with them, seeking more information on the situation and finding out if it was possible to help them in a way that would most definitely exceed our budget but still enable us to accommodate them in our monthly food basket distribution. In the current environment of limited fundraising for resources, this is just an example of what we are dealing with on the ground. Decisions such as these concerning who and how to help such are always difficult to make especially in this time of crisis when we want to help as many vulnerable people as possible.
PATRICIA helping with the distribution of foods to one of our beneficiaries
We have also encountered other setbacks in pursuit of this project. One of them is communication. Clear and consistent communication with these families is sometimes a challenge as many don’t inform us, for a variety of reasons, of their availability to collect the baskets. The basket scheme requires effective communication and cooperation, but as our statistics show, either the family is completely broke with no means of communication, or their mobile phones were spoiled or stolen - hindering smooth deliveries.
When they fail to show up, another family takes the food basket as there are always extra families waiting in eager anticipation for a spare basket. Sometimes when this happens, we have to find ways to compensate for the missing basket in line with the type of service we deliver. Many of the families’ challenges are currently beyond our means, but we do whatever is possible to deliver the food baskets to them. We are creating a strategy that will enable us to follow up on every family and carry out routine checks to see if they are lacking anything they might need.
The fourth food basket delivery happened on 1st July. As our team arrived on site (Uhuru Kenyatta Secondary School), the parents and students (beneficiaries) had already arrived and were ready to receive their share. Some of the mothers and young people among the crowds, hoping for a basket were not on our list of beneficiaries, but were desperate to wait for something even if it was just a kilogram of flour. The hardest part of the distribution is having to turn away some needy families due to a lack of food baskets. The distribution process took approximately 45 minutes due to the families’ urgency and their fear of missing the free-food basket.
We are looking forward to raising more funds so that we can accommodate more families and avoid the sadness of turning some down or having to share baskets. When we encounter these hurdles, our humane sides kick in and it’s easy to disregard our professionalism, sometimes affecting the delivery plan.
One of our beneficiaries waiting for his turn to receive the food basket
Nevertheless, we are glad to have had a successful #covid19Response and delivered approximately 40 food baskets to families. We are honored to continue making more families happier this month and the majority have reported feelings of satisfaction.
We are excited and very grateful for the support everyone has given us throughout the duration of this project and we continue to remain committed to those we are helping during this particular period of pandemic meltdown. We appreciate everyone who has made this project possible through donation or sharing of this hopeful message. We would be extremely grateful for more funding in order to keep delivering more food baskets. If you would like to donate, kindly click here.