On Thursday the 19th of December from 1.30-3.30pm, Gonzaga transition year students are having a soccer tournament to raise funds for school fees and scholarships for children and teens in Kenya and Nigeria!
In the places where we work, children often face many obstacles from poverty and abuse. At IJI we believe everyone has the right to education including children on the margins.
Upendo is the name of an educational and rehabilitation programme based in Kangemi in Kenya, a slum, home to more than 100,000 of Nairobi’s poorest people.
The Programme’s main objective is to rehabilitate, educate, and integrate orphaned and abandoned children and low-income families who face various abuses within the Kangemi district.
Since 1995, the programme has supported the education of vulnerable children.
Our director, John Guiney SJ, founded Upendo after witnessing the hardship and suffering of the poor while based there for over a decade.
Single mothers were often forced into the street to feed their children and HIV was rife, often leading to children losing their guardians and ending up on the street desperate and vulnerable to abuse.
John rallied the local community and gathered St Joseph’s parish to identify Kangemi’s most poor and vulnerable and outreach began to save the lives of children.
To learn more about the Upendo project, you can read Violet’s story, here
Agal sits with her mother outside her home.
In Nigeria, education couldn’t be more critical and although primary school enrolment has increased in recent years, net attendance is only about 70% and Nigeria still has 10.5 million out-of-school children, the world’s highest number, with girls being most of those figures.
Through our programmes, we are making sure the refugee communities, the most marginalised in the Northeast of the country, are not forgotten.
The Girls 4 Girls club is a project focused on empowering girls and supporting girls’ education for brighter futures.
To learn more about our education projects in Nigeria, you can read Agal’s story, a 13 year old in a Junior Secondary School in Askira Uba, Borno State, who has been given the opportunity to study and obtain skills for her future. Read the post: here
We wish the boys luck in their tournament and thank them for supporting the education of those at the margins!
If you would like to support the fundraising tournament for children’s education, click the link below
