 Mak장님u wa namaunite utiti kwa na jmera uchisha, mawa yaqiso kwa kuulikusulatwaсяi yunwa. matkuchu za mwazifu mahttani wajamaweza wajamaweza syunwa. Mwenon toama, mawa Lee Mwazifu hamkuchu kwa makajamaweza. Mwazifuna za matkuchu, kwa mwazifu kwa mwazifu. Jumili wasikisha mwenutisha. Mwazifu mahqinye wa mawazifu mweza, na kwenmelia, kwa makatinkisha mwenutisha. kwa kедeti haf kwa pukaturati wakuru kwa wangali knupi kawali wana kنا hwa matiawe kwa matiawe hwa kwa lupi suki kwa hwa hiuwe kwa kuwama kahiwa Kristine Ago 23 yuja mezii niwa kwa dali hawa hwa kulima niwa kwaa kوا ktuk servi Uwa kwa kwa kwa kwa waka kwa kwa mwa Kwa kwa reporta kwa kwa waka kwa sura kwa kwa kwa We will always step in whether you have a problem or when you are in happiness, we will always be there for you. So Iba has been amazing place for me to be. Ima kwa poa sana, walking this journey, seeing the smile, kama ni kulea tta ria sisi wote, kama ni kufraya sisi wote tta fraya. So generally, Iba is a home to me and also is a god-send, god-alini to us from high school. And then I was able to join Swahiba and I've been learning different things. And then getting to reach out to these people Ima kwa a blessing sana. My name is Peter Bungu. I am the founder, director of Swahiba Networks. Swahiba is a Swahili word which means a close friend. It was picked from the relationship between David and Jonathan. The Swahili version says that Yaudi alikua Swahiba wake Yonathani. And that's where the name of organization has been picked. It's informed by the challenges I faced as a young person in my teenage years where I needed someone to walk with me, to mentor me, to journey with me in life and help me understand the challenges that I was facing. But I didn't find one. So when I grew up and I had the opportunities that God has brought my way, I intentionally made it my mission to be the Swahiba for young people who needs a Swahiba in their lives. Bungu tells us how the Swahiba Networks began and the inspiration behind it. I was privileged to get an education, a scholarship to go and study out of the country, to study theology and Christian youth work for an undergrad program. I had a desire to come back to Kenya and make a difference in the lives of young people because as a young person I really struggled. And so with that opportunity coming for me to get an education at the end of my four year period in the UK, I packed my bags and came back to Kenya. But before coming back home, I had a very interesting experience. I was reading an article, Christian Youth Work Magazine, and in that article there had been a group from an Anglican church in the UK that had come to do some missions in the slums of Kibera. And this group of people encountered a young person, a young man who was about 14-year-old that had lost both of his parents to HIV and AIDS and was asking the same questions that I was asking when I lost my mum at the age of 14. And so that triggered a great desire for me to come into this community and look for that young person. And I packed my bags and left and came back. I had never been to Kibera, but I had heard of it. I grew up my entire life in Akuru. And so I remember one time I was in a bank setting up a business, a tourist and travel business. And there was a gentleman in the bank who was helping me make the transactions. And I think as a bank policy of knowing your customers, he started asking me all these questions. What are you going to do with this money? And all that. I started telling him my plan is to set up a business so that he can support me so that I can mentor young people in the slums and disciple them and help them find their way in life. I know someone who does some amazing work in the slums. So those days KBS was still there. The ones where you pack people like sadins. And we got into that bus and I came and I landed in Kibera. The first time I landed in Kibera, I was so shocked at the conditions under which people were living because I had never seen it. And so that just made it so difficult for me to even think of how on earth am I going to make a difference here because the need is so big and yet I'm so small. And I remembered what I read in that article. When I read that article about that young person, I just wanted to come to this community and find the one person. So I said, you know what, I'm going to start with one. And as they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. I landed at this big center called the Blue House. And the gentleman there called Timothy Muley was feeding hundreds of kids. And every mealtime children would come out of the woodwork and they would feed these kids. And now I had an audience, a captive audience that I could, you know, I could mentor, I could disciple, I could train, I could invest my life in. And that's where Swahiba started. And it grew from that point. I remember one time I was mentoring teenagers telling them about our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit and how it is important for us to guard it and to take care of it and to even desire to walk in purity as a way of honouring God. Chris being a beneficiary and a longtime friend of Peter tells me how he joined the organisation. My name is Chris Omondi. I was born and raised in Kibera here. And actually I went to school in Kibera here. My life kind of evolved here more. So I'm also working here in the community with the people of Kibera. We are doing a community work with them. There's a guy who came in and his name was Peter. He came in as a youth pastor in that church, that particular church and he began to do a mentorship walking with young people and just preaching to them. And it came to a point where he wanted a few young people to take them to the camp. And luckily enough I was one of them that were picked and we went there. I went there and gave my life to Christ. I came to work with him. He mented me and I am one of the people, one of the many people that he worked with and I chose to remain and work with him to do what we are now doing in the community. We have worked with him for several years. This is the 18th year. 18th or 15th to 18th year, I'm not quite sure but it's in that region. So we have done a lot of things for the community because when part of my life I kind of lived in the village and based on the circumstances that I was in, I found myself in and I was kind of neglected by my dad if I may say so. We live in a very bad state of life, a life of sleeping without eating, working with a torn cloth and sometimes you don't go to school because there's no money and all this. So when I realized that, because when I joined Swahiba I began to see these things and I began to see people not going to school in the slums. I began to see people not having enough food to feed themselves or to feed their families. I began to see people not even affording the medical when they are sick, they rather walk into a pharmacy by a panadol to kill the pain but not to cure the pain. So that has made me to, it actually opened my eyes and I was able to know that it gave me an opportunity to serve them and it's increased even the level of passion that I used to have and realized that because now I have been given the opportunity to be here and work more directly with these people, the widows, the young girls, the kids that do not have shoes, then God was preparing me to do such a thing in this community because if somebody come to me and tell me that they have slept without eating it has happened to me and I now understand. If someone comes to me and say that they lack school fees to go to school it has happened to me way back and I totally understand. So it is not a story that someone will come and tell me and then I say that's normal or it's okay it's no longer okay for someone to sleep without food and it's never okay for a child to lack the school fees to go to school and even the food. Not only is the organization keen on orphans and youth empowerment but there is always something more. My name is Imuna Kweirwa most of the people call me Amy around here because it's sort of the easier one I work in Swahiba Networks I've been with them since last year August and I'm really happy to serve with them because it does align with my passion in serving the community. For Swahiba we have a program called Jitambwe Purity Program and I serve as the coordinator of that program we do high school ministry and in that we engage in schools in Kibera a number of them we do have and we engage the Jitambwe Purity Program is made really for ladies in the high school and we talk to them we do understand that even after engaging with them for a while we understand that there are a lot of issues that these ladies actually encounter living in the Kibera slums and therefore we show an opportunity to just come in and be there for them so that they may feel like they don't have to go through these issues alone they have someone they can talk to and as you can see my age is still young so our age bracket is not that far so they kind of get too late with someone who is almost their age or just slightly above their age so we speak to these ladies and just trying to get them to know how to deal with the issues they encounter and to live a positive life in Kibera getting them to understand that regardless of where you have been born and what challenges you are going through you are still a powerful lady and you can be able to make differences despite of the mistakes you might have done before there are ways you can recover yourself you can upgrade you can be a better person in the community it hasn't been easy for Peter but he is a master of his own art he reveals to me his secrets to success there are many challenges in this community because you find that a lot of young people they do not have a role model from a previous generation that may have gone to university or have broken off from the poverty cycle and so because of what you don't know you don't know and if you are not exposed to something you are not aware of it a lot of them are limited to just thinking that once they have a high school education then that becomes enough so beyond that particularly for girls they would think about either getting married or getting into doing manual jobs that might not pay them very well or sometimes waske scenario getting into vices like prostitution and crime that eventually wrecks their lives completely and so those challenges are there but that is part of the reason why we are here to mitigate and help make a difference and journey with those that have chosen to walk alongside of us so that we can positively transform their lives economically it's also very challenging because a lot of people who live in this community may not necessarily have the level of education or the skill sets that pay very well so a lot of people would leave this community and go and fend for manual jobs that pay very minimally and because of that they leave from one paycheck to another paycheck and it is not very easy to break from that when the conditions under which you live are very tough yet the resources available to you are also limited and so one of the things that we encourage particularly young people is not to stop with just a high school education is to add value to their lives by attending any online classes they can adding any necessary skills that they can so that then they become competitive and even when the opportunities are there they are able to compete within the limited opportunity away from the business of life our hero knows how to count his mind and reflect on life through creative writing I've written two books the first book is called they call it a slum we call it home because a lot of people call this Kibera slums and we people who live here call it home they don't call it the slum they call it home so that's the title of the book and the book is to the essence of the book is just to give people who don't live in this community a sneak preview of what life is like particularly for children and I've written it from a perspective of 8 to 12-year-old to understand what life is like the challenges these children face and give them an opportunity to think about how they can engage and possibly even make a difference in that community so it's an interesting read plenty of illustrations and also just fun so in every page there's a new word there's a new word in every page so children can actually learn a new word every time they flip a page the other book is called Loved by You and the essence of the book is to share the story of Swahiba over the last 20-21 years and how the impact it has had but also the journey that it has taken the highs and the lows for instance in that book there's a story of a young man called Amfri Amfri one time he went to he was part of a crew that went on on what they called Misheni they went to commit some crime basically and things went south and they started getting shot at by the police and several of his friends were shot at and Amfri actually framed death he actually framed himself dead and they ended up taking all the bodies to the city mog and he stayed dead among his friends so they didn't actually get killed but then his life completely changed we invited him to come to a youth camp that we had we ment had him walked with him and now he's a married man amazing things happening in his life and we've documented the story in the book and many many other young people other young man who lived in my home his name is Victor we've documented the story in that book Victor was literally just being abused by his auntie who was living in this community with him he'd wake up at 3 a.m. to make samosas and pastries and so one time I picked Victor Victor lived in my house for four years and during the time when Victor lived with us we had the best samosas and chapattis because he was only like maybe 11-12 years old but he was very good at cooking he was very good at cooking he used to wake up at 3 a.m. to cook in his auntie's kibanda and so he became very good at doing pastries and so the period when he lived with us and he had a chance to go back to school he's now a married man with children and those are the things that make me want to do this again and again the book is available local bookshops but also on our website you can order the book from our website and also on our social media platforms you can also order soft copy I've just finished writing another book it's called It's Possible and it's a children's book as well looking at environment how we can actually conserve and protect our environment and make a difference individually and corporately and that book again is excellent illustrations but it has focused on all of us walking together to conserve and protect the environment so that says it's hot coming hot on the release day almost writing another book that focuses on the mental health of children I think there's a conversation going on right now about mental health but it's leaning on the adult rather than the children so I'm taking the perspective of how do we make sure that children are healthy mentally and what are the things and safeguards that we need to put in place to make sure that children are healthy mentally and they are growing mentally because everything starts with the mind so our healthy mind translates into a healthy community and an excellent healthy nation as well no nation can prosper in anything without the input and ideas of its youths that is the reason why this gentleman has taken to himself to ensure that this group of people is taken care of for the prosperity of our society the future is bright the future is exceptionally bright because we want our desires to replicate this in various parts of this nation on this region of Africa and across this continent that is our desire so we are working very hard for this concept to work because this concept is designed to be a facility that makes it possible for an organization to function but also brings resources into the organization financial resources so once we are fully fledged and this place is fully operational with all the programs and the plans we do have our hope is that it will be able to sustain itself resource the programs here and then be able to use this as a replica or a blueprint for other regions of this nation and really be able to do this nationally but then also regionally and also all over the content of Africa Africa has 1.3 billion people and that's a lot of people to reach if there is someone who is faithful and truthful in the world is Peter he will you know running an organization in one place for 20 years is not easy people who started with him I think majority of them maybe they have walked out or they pulled out and they are doing something else and his consistency and the zeal that he has and the passion to serve the community of Kibera he has never gone to any other place since day one he came to Kibera so I would say that he is a he is a very faithful guy who walk in obedience in accordance with how God has called him to do because if it were somebody else running an organization which a growing organization not even a grown the one that is now growing slowly for more than 20 years in one place it might not be easy it's quite a task for some people he is very focused in achieving every single thing he is aligned he needs to do this he is a person who thinks quite fast so whenever we have a problem he knows what solution to give at what time so he is a first thinker and I'm glad that he actually encourages us because we are a number of the staff so he encourages us just working together he gets involved in actually the programs that we do the different programs so I'd say that is a very good person to work with ya I'd highly recommend so it's been nice it's been nice working with Peter I'd like to say thank you so much to Mr Peter Abungu for giving me this opportunity of reaching out to the community and the Swahiba Networks what we need to do now is to make this opportunity so that the passion in that womtumanyan is not labda whatever Swahiba is doing but Peter may to trust Sana with everything that we do in the community and God I'm very good to Sana Sana kabisa kabisa with this vision and mission to come back we are here to support him we are here to pray with him the CEO Peter Abungu so grateful for this program that he has put up for young girls in the slums since the slum is a place which is not good for young girls so I'm so grateful to him for making us independent as young ladies before we continue with our tashari education I want to say that this nation is a great nation a great opportunity is I think those that have had the privilege of traveling around the world when you come back home you have a very different world view of how blessed Kenya is we are actually a very blessed nation and all of us if we are able to rise to the occasion I know we have so many challenges but rise to the occasion and do what we can with the resources or the places where we have been planted we are able to make a difference personally I came from a very affluent nation came back to Kenya in 2002 when things were literally falling apart but I've been able to bath this vision and see it grow to the level that it has grown and if I can do it anyone can and I want to encourage anyone watching today that please don't give up there is hope for the Bible says that there is hope even for a tree even though it's cut it will sprout again