 Hello, and many thanks for keeping us company. This is why in the morning we want to see how people are fighting COVID-19. It's been around 100 days now since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Kenya and there has been a lot of containment measures that the government through the Ministry of Health has come up to help us to flatten the curve or even to control the virus now with the claims that to get to a point we'll live with the virus here with us now but that remains to be seen. We will be looking in the masks that people have been required and asked to wear them. We have had the WHO recommending the N95 to health workers and even home caregivers and of course we know it is very expensive even in the country it is expensive. Our medical practitioners have a problem with having it including the PPEs. So it has been a struggle and even the members of the public are requested to wear masks in Kenya every time they are out here but now which masks should you have. How about if you can't afford considering majority of our population is made of the vulnerable families. So we have a group of people who have decided we're going to help people have mask reusable mask and I want them to tell us about the mask I'm speaking to Boniface Betty and Yvonne, Yvonne Ghase. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you for having us. I'm sorry. Mkupua. I'm sorry. All right. Now I want to begin with you Bonfa. Tell me about the GreenString Network. How did it begin and by the way what informed the decision coming up with the idea of helping people. Okay. Thank you so much Hillary. So as you correctly put it we work for an organization called the GreenString Network. So GreenString Network is an organization that has been around for the last three years and we are mainly peace building organization but the way we do peace building work for us is not necessarily doing conflict negotiation or conflict resolution per se. We are responding we are an organization that is created to respond to social conflicts at most and we use different approaches to this so our organization uses the trauma informed lens creating awareness about the impacts of trauma on communities and how that affects communities well-being and resilience. So we are a resilience building organization and we work with community organizations so we are a network of organizations and basically when COVID-19 broke out in this country we traditional like for the past three years we have been working with communities through a program called kumekucha which is mainly a community initiative that is working with that was created to respond to things like violent extremism but also things like gender-based violence and all forms of violence by breaking the cycles of violence especially in communities that are plagued by the trauma for example of continuous conflicts. So when we began to do that we spent time doing that in kust, in Nairobi, here in Majengo but also in the entire kust region responding to violent extremism working with communities especially the families that have been directly impacted by violent extremism. So after that we also came up with a program that has been working with the National Police Service it's called Mount Kumpia where while we worked with the community members they always told us that you are doing amazing work we really love your work but how come you are not working with the members of the National Police Service sort of like to say like we are the good guys and the bad guys who really need a lot of help now this is in regards now to the gender-based violence this is now what organization has been doing so far especially in regards to working with communities but now working with the National Police Service before we came to now the next step of our working on responding to COVID-19 so the first thing was communities and then we started to work with National Police Service with the National Police Service we came up with a program that was almost the same as the community one but also working with members of National Police Service to look at for example what do psychos of violence within the practice and the culture policing in Kenya what kind of psychos of violence are manifest there and who is the best person to tell us that it is the police officers themselves so we spend time with them reflecting and looking at the different types of psychos of violence that are inherent within the structures or that police individual police officers face on routinely in the daily execution of their mandates as police officers so that happened we just ended it we learned that program it was learned by the inspector general police and Muam Kumpia as it is referred to was recommended to be used in training institution for National Police Service to help the policing service adopt trauma informed practices in their work and then we were just at the verge we had just completed launching this program that COVID-19 broke out in Kenya right so we spend time as an organization thinking how can we respond to the pandemic and especially the fact that COVID-19 has exacerbated like brought to the surface some of the already existing social problems so we started to reflect on that and that is where now we came to the whole idea of launching the mask the family mask initiative in Kenya and this initiative has actually the person that we've been working with we've evolved in organization right has been leading these efforts it seems you have quite a journey from where you've come and I see you have a lot of ideas on how helping the communities are now even working with the police considering they are part of the community only that they are the main in uniform anyway but they are part of us now even for the last 100 days people have been wearing masks by mask you live if you're leaving home come out here with a mask last you be arrested and I've had all manner of things whether you have the mask or you don't have others are wearing how will you and you ask them it's because I'm I'm afraid of the officers will be arrested but we need to wear mask if you need to be protected now having come up with the idea of having the mask how has the journey been thank you for that question the journey of getting to the mask actually started before it was made mandatory by the government I remember when COVID broke out it was just three days after we had done the momkampia launch we launched on the 10th of March and on the 13th of March the first case was reported in Kenya and we started to quickly research about what other countries are doing in regards to protecting themselves against COVID and the masks wearing a mask was one of them but also finding a comfortable mask was an uphill task so there are those masks that have elastic that pull on your ears and then there are the masks that have a certain and easy feet I don't know whether you've seen them they they come up to here and then you look like you have a mazol on there are all these masks and so for us finding a comfortable mask even as we continued to go to the office and of course we started with our stay at work at home order so we started working from home and then Bonnie and others decided we can no longer work from home because then we'll just be succumbing to COVID has hit us and we don't have a solution so what do we do we started to look for a comfortable mask and also to look at messaging that looked like us so it's actually the illustrations of COVID messaging that looks like us you've seen the hand washing ones the ones that have all white hands yeah yeah yeah you've seen those ones right so we started making paintings illustrations that looked like us messaging that said how to properly wear a mask but that had a Kenyan face we've made illustrations we have a Google site app with all free illustrations that you can download and you can get all our material there you can print stick them up in your office space and things like that so in the process of that we came we came across a comfortable mask that you could wear and I don't know if I this can be seen this is the mask that we chose right this mask looks simple but it's not very simple it's actually my own personal mask that's why it's a bit crisp because I washed it over the weekend and it's a three ply mask right so it's made of a used kanga and then this straps look like the ones for suspenders for glasses so you can't lose this mask that means you also cannot leave it lying around so that your child can pick it or your wife can pick it oh I'm going to the shop and then they pick it and they wear it and they go to the shop because one of the things with COVID is you're not supposed to share masks yeah exactly so when your mask is usually around your face which it was like this so when it's hung around your face like this it stops people from sharing masks right then or even forgetting it somewhere or forgetting it yes then you get arrested then you get arrested yes so it's a very simple wear mask so you put it around your neck and this design was actually made by a lovely lady called Karol Devi Karol Devi made these masks and gave them to Jason the first lot where is she from she's from Karen she saws as a hobby Karen here in Kenya Karen here in Kenya here in Nairobi in Nairobi Karen in Nairobi Kenya so Karol Devi does sewing as a hobby so she came up with many prototypes as she also continued to research online on how what is the correct standard so she she did the one ply then she did the two ply she started with the elastic and then the elastic got very expensive then she decided oh what if I actually put a strap around it like this but then the challenge was how was she going to sew it on put this on and like sew it on and she discovered if she did a one fold on on a piece of cutout kitanga I learned that this one is called unfold according to the fundies because when you cut it you cut the material out like this and then unfold you fold it once and you stitch once once once once okay so you stitch four times but you only fold it once so um and inside it has an a piece of old t-shirt and that's why it's very affordable that's why you're calling it the three ply yes it has another piece inside it has another piece inside which now that old t-shirt acts as a filter then the t-shirt the material what is it made of cotton it's all cotton and why cotton because cotton helps you breathe I'm sure you've had stories of people wearing masks and passing out oh he was jogging wearing his mask and he passed out you've had those stories right yeah and it's been reported but why cotton because cotton is a breathable material and it helps you breathe and it makes the wearing of the mask very comfortable and when you can wear the mask comfortably then you don't have to take it off all right yeah so I'd like to do a small demo of how to wear the carol mask we call it the carol mask after carol davie oh all right yes so you just pull it up like that and then you when you crimp the sides like this it ensures that no no air gets in or gets out then you have a small pocket you put your face up so because mine is old I just do like this quickly put it around my neck and tie if you look at the sides here no oxygen is no no air is coming in and no air is coming out we we have some demand you repeat what you have just done okay I want to follow the donning okay it's okay so you put it around your neck so here it is you put it around your neck like that then you bring it up to your face you pull the sides of the string while it's here while it's here okay so that it covers under your chin it covers up to your nose and then you pull it and then you tie I have a question on that we you've just adjusted according to how you feel you comfortable but then we have this mask when you speaking it is put by the chin then your nose is left exposed so I could actually leave it on let me tie it properly and I'll continue the rest of the show with my mask on and you'll actually see it doesn't move because it's adjusted to the shape of my face and how comfortable and that's the difference with the carol mask and like this other masks also because of how tight it is here if I had glasses on they wouldn't steam all right so it's uh it's a huge huge plus because I I found people saying I you know I can't wear a mask when I'm driving why because I wear spectacles and if I wear a mask they are going to steam up and I can't see oh true okay now this is the mask that you have come up with carol davis mask yeah very commendable but now you have chosen to deal with the vulnerable families yes we saw during the first case of wearing the mask in mombasa we saw a lady and a child wearing the bottle and it cost an uproar to many people because you were like you could have just cut something and cover your mouth how which criteria you're using to get to these vulnerable families yeah so um that's a very good question but just before maybe we answer this question of criteria of getting to the vulnerable families I just want to reiterate what everyone was saying especially when this thing broke out in Kenya just a quick one is that the biggest questions we had were like how do we uh how do we create key message life-saving messages to help people protect themselves from this pandemic the virus especially specifically right and what we did was like for example what do people and maybe you you'll follow up on that question but we started to ask ourselves what do people understand by social distancing by isolation by staying at home quarantine quarantine in the real world because you see because these things were coming from uh the international community but also coming through our official minister of health channels right but how do you apply that for example in a crowded market or on a matter to stage or on like in in a crowded place you know which is our reality here so those were some of the questions we had and then we created now probably we'll also talk about like the fact that we started to work with local artists to be able to develop uh like using illustrations and drawings for example this is a market and this is what you can do to keep social distancing you know so we started to use paintings and drawings to do that and uh also uh send specific key messages to the people in vernacular languages like in kikuyu kiswahili luya in lu so we have interpreters and people who have helped us to do that so we all we have all these posters that we are giving together with the masks that have messages and images to show for example if you are a matter to conductor or if you are sitting in a matter to this is what you can do about social distancing this is what it means in the real world so that is not just something that is removed it is localized people feel it is part of our story because right now we are dealing with situations where some people even are saying there is no corona virus so how do you make them understand this is something that is a real threat on their lives but even maybe before we talk a little bit about that maybe one can tell us about like your criteria of selecting because we have a very unique criteria of getting the masks to the unique uh to the needy families yeah and of course when it comes to having the the criteria to get the vulnerable communities we've had issues people take having interest i may declare i am vulnerable but in real sense i am not just because i want to benefit then i deny someone who is really in need the chance to have it how are you coming up with the idea and getting the the real ones okay uh thank you for that so at the initial beginning uh when we started uh in fact doing the covid illustrations because that came before the carol mask when we started doing that uh we sent out our community facilitator we have uh one young man we are based in loresho and we sent one young man to our neighborhood bank kangemi and he went round and collected stories of what are people doing and how are they living with the changing times and we realized that as green string network it is going to be very hard for us to identify the needy families because if we go on the ground everybody looks needy everybody looks like they have a need like you said somebody might even pose like they are needy and so they might um take advantage of some place where somebody else would have gotten the chance so now what we did is we started after sending out our community facilitator we started to figure out why not use the existing community based organizations to actually work with families and pinpoint for us who needs the help right so we work with community already existing community based organizations some which use numbakum initiative like in kangemi we are also working closely with the chief's office which gives us direction and tells us you know uh this is a needy community this is uh these are needy families and usually we put our masks into food rations that are distributed then into the community all right yeah now um for the period that you have been in operation how has the reception been uh what are some of the challenges you have gone through in trying to help uh this particular persons uh i think because the situation coronavirus or covid-19 situation is is a first evolving situation so there is a lot of changes that happen like every single day and one of the challenges we also face uh is that the need is huge it's overwhelming right so if you think for example what Yvonne was saying we are working in kangemi for example we are also working in Kawanguare we are also trying to reach out to Isli just those areas alone those are informal settlements and with high density volumes of populations so the challenges is that we we will really want to provide as many masks as possible so the challenge we have also is that we really want to partner with different people organizations or even private sector to be able to provide as many masks as possible because a mask alone can go a long way to save our life a person who has a mask that is properly worn a mask that is uh that is created in a clinically sound way will be able to to survive will not be able to get infected just like a person who doesn't have a mask so in terms of like you look at it in terms of cost of economics economics of scale then you realize it's cost effective to have a mask than even use because again at the end of the day we are working in very low resource settings public health people call this kind of settings low resource settings where people don't have a lot of capital so masks come in as lifesaving items for people and to have this kind of mask like Yvonne is explaining that is made by uh tailors who are women who are based in these communities you know from materials like t-shirts and lessos and orkangas i think that makes this enterprise a little bit more cost effective and at the same time lifesaving for majority of our big population in the informal settlements true now even most of the people had lost their jobs when kovin 19 came and we uh bonfaces just mentioned the fund is and i know yeah majority of them had prepared themselves for events and all all of those uh designs but now kovin came they are now benefiting from uh this how else can we make even the least person who never expected like the mask have been made have you gotten the distributors or you just doing it by yourselves so uh thank you for that uh one of the pillars of the karo mask initiative the family cloth mask initiative is giving a livelihood to the women so alongside alongside identifying communities that are vulnerable one of the things we started to identify is tailors whose businesses had adversely been affected by the kovin 19 pandemic so like boni mentioned earlier we were working with the community and we were working with the police pre kovin so when kovin struck as part of our kovin response is we continued to work with the same constituents we continued working with our community members and we continued working with our police families so some of our tailors are police wives like i will tell you the story of one police wife who as she was coming for our training the very first time to learn how to stitch the karo mask she got called that her husband had gotten an accident the husband is a police officer yes he's serving and he broke both legs and needed to go into surgery but that also meant that she now becomes the sole breadwinner of the family um she went to hospital stayed with him came back for the for the training and after she came for the training she went home with her package of masks and asked for an extended period of time to sew because she was in between hospital and that's how we continue to help the constituents that we're still working with so we continue to work with women in the community who earn a little bit of money from sewing our masks and that's how we're creating the livelihood for them and if we get the donations of the mask of the material to sew the masks and we have an imperson number where you can send in donations of cash the cash goes into paying the women and the material goes into making the masks so it's a win win and then the mask go back into the community so it's actually a win win for everyone it's uh what karo calls a kenyan for kenya and i'm sure many people can remember that initiative karo reminded us of that when we asked her why she's not making putting a patent to her design and she said it's a it's me as a kenyan giving back to the kenyan society right and so this is a kenyan for kenyan initiative where all the money and all the material we are collecting goes into making the mask the money goes into paying the women and the mask actually go back into society so so it's like a livelihood kind of support system right because imagine in these informal settlements you have a family of like an average family of like maybe six people in the house you know and mostly they use these masks that are like uh you buy a mask even for 50 shillings daily for the six people i mean it might look very easy for some people but if you're a person who is worried about your survival needs that can be a huge uh it can be a huge challenge actually i'm looking at one of the posters actually it was running on tv uh i'm seeing for 1000 kenyan shillings uh this can cater for eight members of the family reusable if if you get these 1000 can stand for these people uh it's right on the screens and then we have 1500 can support a family of six with 12 exactly and guess what this is something that can be done by the kenyan themselves like i saw in limuru the other day on tv there is a a whole flat where people have been identified to be covid-19 positive the community members who are farmers are feeding them they are feeding one of their own like their neighbors in the villages but they are coming to feed people who are living in a flat give bringing them sukumawiki bringing them potatoes and all this kind of things so this is something that kenyans can be able to do especially for majority of family members who are in the informal settlements that might really not be able to afford buying masks every day just by supporting this simple initiative and the tailors are based within these informal settlements now uh to this end who is your greatest partner or who are you looking for you working with the government minister of health has been saying we will have as cheap as 50 and 30 or even 20 remember the first days they were saying we will have mask for 20 shillings of which uh i i am not saying i'm not saying that because even this fundi will need food to eat and their families to cater for actually how much is this mask the reply from our friend we have not sold this mask we have not sold any of them so unless you're asking at cost you're asking at cost cost of production so cost of production um if you're to buy all the material including um paying the fundi it comes to about 70 shillings per mask per mask yes it comes to about 70 shillings per mask and um why it because why it comes to about 70 shillings per mask is also because of our production scale you know if we produce larger amounts of course the cost of production goes down but if we are producing in small scale like we are currently then that's why the cost of the production is that high and the families get two masks per family member we get why do they get two masks per family member so that you can wash one and wear one so that even today as it is cold if i wash this one and hang it out to dry by tomorrow in the morning it's actually dry and it's made of cotton and it's not very heavy cotton it's a kanga so it will be dry by morning and when it's dry then i can wear i can wash the other one i had and wear this one so you always ensure you have a clean mask to wear and for every member of the family of course children under under three are not wearing masks all right we a lot of time we have only one minute and before i come to you i'd like you just to have one call this is your camera tell someone something from home uh what you're looking forward to and how you do want to be helped then you'll be closing with you bund face okay okay uh so i would like to make an appeal to anybody who can the youth especially this is our time to protect the nation to protect our loved ones and the vulnerable ones so uh this is a rallying call to help us password round share uh as much information as you can if you can donate your old t-shirts kanga if you can do an impesa donation kindly do so let's help protect our nation let's help protect our vulnerable against covid-19 i think even bund face you you recommendations and as you finish okay thank you very much uh Hilary so the thing is we would like to make an appeal to all especially stakeholders like we are all actually we are not even stakeholders we are all shareholders in this country and the life of each each member of this country great nation really matters in the past we have overcome serious national crisis and we have always emerged as winners but the best thing we have to do right now is to think about the vulnerable members of our society who are our brothers and sisters recently we have just seen that police officers have started to be infected by this virus and that is really really heartbreaking we are also providing masks for police families actually and this is something we are also working on so we really want to appeal to the nation private sector uh companies uh other organizations businesses we will really love to partner with you on this course this is a course that is really really important for our our dignity as a country we cannot allow members our brothers and sisters to suffer and to get infected by covid-19 virus just because they don't have a mask that will have been afford afforded if we contributed to this great course all right thank you all right thank you so much bund face and even for coming and back on my trust you have learnt something about this uh mask and you are out there you have your odd clothes you'd want to donate you have a place to take it now uh stop piling things we have people to help your t-shirt your kanga will go along with to helping us flatten the curve by the use of mask and helping the vulnerable families in our society i was speaking to bund face but he's a program manager green strings network and even gashia programs assistant i'll be seeing you again very soon later in the day with the updates from the minister of health and later in the evening we'll be having a discussion on women and power stay tuned to 1 2 5 4 2 then enjoy the rest of our programming. My name is Adreva Hilewi. Good morning