Helping Homeless Kenyan Children during COVID

The Rotary Club of Sleaford KESTEVEN has been supporting, during the Covid-19 crisis, the homeless and hungry children of Meru, Kenya.  In conjunction with the Rotary Club of GRANTHAM KESTEVEN it has donated £1,320 (which included a generous Rotary District Foundation Charity grant of £660.00). The two Clubs have been working with the Rotary Club of Meru, Kenya, who set up the ‘MERU STREET KITCHEN’ to provide daily food to over 350 desperate children.  At first, there was only a handful of children attend the kitchen, but it wasn’t long before several 100 visited.  

These children living around Meru had no means of support during the Covid crisis.  Previously they foraged for food in local markets, around restaurants, local farms shops, etc but during Covid-19 these were closed.  In addition, food became very scarce in the region due to very large plagues of locust devouring the local farmers maize crops.

The operation in Kenya has been organised and supervised by the Rotary Club of Meru, Kenya.  It is important when working with charity projects overseas to have reliable people on the ground.  This is one of the advantages when donating to Rotary International projects in that there are rotary clubs in over 200 countries and if possible, we try and work with a Rotary club in the region.

In the next few months, The Rotary Club of Sleaford KESTEVEN will be working with 10 other Rotary Clubs in the district and with the help of a Rotary Foundation Global Grant will help to establish in the MERU area a permaculture model.  This project is designed to educate local farmers and introduce new techniques and strategy to increase agricultural productivity.  The money raised will help to create demonstration sites – Tree Nursery, a Dairy, a piggery and poultry unit.

Provided by the Rotary Club of Sleaford Kesteven and public donations, the ‘Red Bin’ (for recycling aluminium cans) that was in the grounds of Carre’s Grammar School in Sleaford has been moved to a location outside the school’s Sports Hall (where it is more visible to users).  It has also been relabelled to better reflect where the money raised is going.

The other ‘Bins’ in Sleaford – at the entrance to Kesteven and Sleaford High School and at Hockmeyer Motors in Holdingham – continue to be well used and we thank contributors for their help, but please can you use the ‘crushers’ provided as we can get more cans in the bin that way.