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Friends
of Kitui is a voluntary group which evolved from the Dalkey Parish
Outreach project, set up in 1999 to support two Dalkey priests,
Father Paul Healy (working in Kitui
Diocese, Kenya) and
Father Alan Glynn (working in the city of Teresina, Brazil).The
group started with a monthly fund-raising
coffee morning, for relief of poverty mainly through providing
education for orphans and vulnerable children, and small
income-generation activities. Friends
of Kitui was formally established in 2005 as an umbrella
structure linking the activities of the various voluntary
groups who are contributing to support the needs of the
people of Kitui. In addition to Dalkey, it now embraces
donors from other Dublin parishes, notably Cabinteely and
Rathgar, as well as corporate donors and others in the
United States and Britain. We are always looking for other
parishes or community groups to join us in this work.
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An
important feature of the Friends of Kitui approach is that all
money donated goes to projects in Kitui. Our funds are mainly,
but not exclusively, channelled through the Catholic
Diocese of Kitui, because as a Partner of world agencies such as
the World Food Programme, the Church in Kitui has the structure
to support, implement and monitor projects. We insist that
beneficiaries of our projects should include persons of all
faiths, and none, in Kitui: however we recognise that the
majority will be Catholic.
Projects
in Kitui are monitored by Friends of Kitui volunteers visiting
these projects on a very regular basis- at least four or five
visits per year. Costs
associated with the organisation’s own activities, including
travel costs to and from Kenya, are borne personally by the
promoters here in Ireland.
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How our Projects Evolved
Late 2005, following an appeal
by Fr Paul in Cabinteely Parish, Aidan Corless
decided to take on board two major projects- the first for the education
of children orphaned due to AIDS, and the second
to raise funds for the construction of a new Secondary
School for Kitui.
Around the same time, Pat
Torpey took responsibility for promoting Water Projects
and the project for the Empowerment of Women through
micro-buainess projects.
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Sheila O'Malley and Gerry Jones have
taken on fundraising for a number of Water Projects with
considerable success to date.
Terry Dunne and Clare Byrne who
launched Dalkey Parish
Outreach discovered that even small amounts of money are able to do an amazing
amount of good.
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What
We Do
We
raise funds to support community projects for the provision of water and
education services in the Catholic Diocese of Kitui, in the Eastern Province
of Kenya.
We also support projects to encourage
self sustainability and particularly those for the empowerment of
women.
We are committed to ensure that 100% of the donations
received go directly to the supported projects.
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We
believe in sustainable development. This means that our
projects are geared towards enabling or empowering our
partners either to free up their time for more
productive activties, or to get under way with
income-generating projects which they will continue to
develop and expand under their own initiative.
We
believe that:
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Everyone has a
right to water, the basic requirement for life
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Everyone has a
right to education
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Everyone has a
right to adequate food
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Everyone has a
right to advancement
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These rights exist
irrespective of Race or Religion
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Bringing animals to find water - rural
Kitui.
Farmers must scoop out the bed of seasonal rivers to find
water for their livestock
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Daniel
Mulwa (Centre) of the
St. John Eudes Rehabilitation Centre can now
afford to smile. The 20 year old , who has no memory of his
childhood, had been on cocaine for 8 years, before
being admitted at the centre.It
took four months of concerted care
before Daniel could even speak. Now, the Centre is his
family, and is helping him to get his life back.
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We
support people in need in Kitui, Kenya.
