Why I’ve become a friend of ANDY

Here our VSO volunteer Gareth Wilce tells us why he's signed up to be the first member of ANDY's new Friends of Scheme.

The easy explanation is that I’ve had the enormous pleasure of working with this very different, dynamic organization for 12 months. I’ve seen the impact ANDY’s programmes are having, and have been privileged to support its growth into a leading voice for young persons with disabilities in Kenya.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 15% of any population is living with a disability. In Kenya that’s nearly 6m people, the majority of whom are trying to break free from a cycle of poverty and dependence in the face of stigmatizing cultural attitudes and inaccessible basic services like education and healthcare. The best way to describe the challenge faced by person with disabilities in Kenya is to say that to the politicians, the employers, the banks and the public institutions, they are at the back of a very long queue.

Me with the boss, Fredrick Ouko (L!)

I’ve seen how well ANDY is developing its programmes to reduce stigma and close the gap by giving them the same opportunities as other Kenyans to take control of their own lives. ANDY’s programmes help them access employment opportunities or credit for businesses, sports sessions and essential information about health in a format they can understand. I’ve also seen ANDY’s leadership within the disability sector; the profile and potential of young persons with disabilities like our executive director, Fredrick Ouko, challenging myths and stereotypes about the capacity of person with disability on the national and international stage.

I’ve been to Kiengu, a village north of Mount Kenya and seen how one of the young persons with disability ANDY has trained in advocacy work is passing on her knowledge and passion to a 40-strong group of other persons with disability. This is resulting in real improvements in people’s lives; like Daudi Manjuri Kanga, who before the group’s intervention was being denied his constitutional right to an education, and Mary Kangai, who had been denied a national ID card – basically an essential to access anything here in Kenya - because her disability prevented her giving fingerprint samples.

But the real reason ANDY needs friends like me is for the unglamorous things; the small investments which big donors forget need to be made. Donors give restricted funding; meaning every shilling in the budget is accounted for in the programme. Organisations working at the heart of communities need some reserve money, to have the flexibility to give people the support they really need, to try new things and also to protect the organisation from events out of their control – like the global recession which has disrupted so many donors and programmes.

One of our beneficiaries George in his workshop

 

 

 

Some of the jewellery George creates from cowbone

Thanks to a donation from a friend in the UK earlier this year, ANDY has been able to give a hearing-impaired man batteries for his hearing aid so he could attend a job interview. ANDY has also been able to give volunteer outreach workers bus fare to inform disability self-help groups about their new rights under the Kenyan constitution. This ‘unrestricted’ funding also helped pay for extra memory and new anti-virus software for the cyber café’s computers so that we can continue to grow this sustainable source of income.
Its working; profits are up by 5000% per cent since March this year.

A water business in Kibera started with a loan from ANDY

The more ‘Friends’ ANDY has, the more small-scale, income-generating activities it could develop in its new resource centre in Africa’s most famous and reportedly largest slum, Kibera. This could stop persons with disabilities wasting valuable time and money travelling miles across Nairobi to get their wheelchairs, hearing aids and walking aids repaired. It could help set up workshops (the vocational ones, not the training methods favoured by development agencies) providing opportunities for persons with disabilities to learn a skill and earn a wage. Or the contributions could help send delegates to events like the World Youth Leadership Summit going on in Nairobi now, or simply provide the bus fare for someone to get across the city so they can attend one of our programmes. Right now ANDY could do with the cash to buy a second TV for the cyber café, so it can utilise both the Playstation 2s donated by supporters in the UK this summer. This isn’t the sort of thing ANDY can ask Comic Relief, DfID, USAID or the Open Society Institute for! As little as six dollars (the equivalent of the cheapest monthly rents available in Kibera) can have a huge impact; paying for the medical assessment required to register as a person with a disability, a pre-requisite for accessing the tax relief and other services provided by the government.

A deaf intern gains valuable work experience in ANDY's cyber cafe

If you’re like me and don’t want to simply be paying the travel expenses or infrastructure costs of a huge charity, and are also concerned about the governance practices of the smaller organisations you could donate to, then becoming a Friend of ANDY is the solution.

If you want to become a Friend of ANDY, email info@andy.or.ke. This is a growing organisation which will no doubt be using our money wisely to make a real difference to the lives of some of the world’s most disadvantaged people as it grows over the next decade.

ANDY sports programmes

ANDY welcomes any contributions to support our work. You can give some of the most disadvantaged people in the world the opportunity to gain control of their own lives; to give them mobility, confidence, basic health information or even further their education for as little as 1000 Kenyan Shillings (about 7pounds sterling or 10 US dollars) a year. These are typical ways we will use the funding received from Friends’ contributions:
 





Item                           Amount in Ksh                             Amount in dollars
Wheel chair                    7, 500                                                    75
Orthopaedic crutches     1,200 per pair                                      12
Walking sticks                450                                                      4.5
Elbow crutches               900                                                        9
Shoulder crutches          900                                                        9
Hearing batteries          700                                                        7

Medical assessment    600                                                         6
(required to register for tax exemption and government services)

Publication of mini         200                                                       2
self help books

Travel to attend s          200                                                        2
ports programme

College scholarship per term per one person
Nairobi university        50,000                                               500
Kenya institute
of management             33,000                                               330
Industrial rehabilitation
Centre                           10, 000                                                100