 You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you. This is well understood when you visit Joy Divine Children's Organization located in the heart of Langokuba in the neighbouring Madari slums. Fredrick tells us how this became a routine. I work with Joy Divine Children's Organization that began in the year 2000 and today you are with us here at Joy at Langokuba for one of our outreach programs. The initial children that we rescued from the streets, kathasi of the Nairobi City Council by then around 2003, all got to go to the highest levels of education. That was high schools, some joint colleges and eventually others joined universities. So our facility was empty and we thought that why not do much more. So we partnered with the Sanctuza Catholic Church and we started a feeding program for close to a thousand street families from Madari, Langokuba, Isli area and from the city centre. Not only does the organization strive to get the street children food but they ensure this children having a feeling of family setting. We started with this program, it became practical, we came on the streets, we did a feeding program and new partners came on board. So we've had partners who partnered with us to do medical outweaches that has not only benefited the street families but also the immediate community. So and we were able to link in the Nairobi County Health Department and it did the medical camp with them. So Joy Divine facilitated getting the drugs, getting the allowances for the doctors, for the clinical officers and the community benefited and this was a way of us partnering with also friends who supported the education of the Joy Divine children. So they also got to see that we're doing something in the community. So they partnered with us and we've done at least three or four major medical camps in the community. So we do basic things like deworming, skin creams for skin diseases, we do cleaning of the wounds and ENT and many other things that the doctors find fit to treat the community. So we also do sports outweaches in that we bring the whole community together in that there's a good rapport within the community and especially during the holidays we keep the young people busy. So we're able to give things like soka gear, soka balls, trophies and just have a wonderful time with the community. Michael Mwangi, a student and a volunteer of Joy Divine's Children's Organization explains how they carry out these services religiously. What usually happens here is we are a group of students from various universities across Nairobi and what we do is we meet here every Saturday and do a proper feeding program now for the street families. We no longer refer to them as street families after doing it for over six years now. We now refer to them as VIPs because they're very important people. It's just that they don't have that opportunity to explore and be whoever they want to be in this life. So now what to usually do here once we get here in the morning is we first start with a morning devotion in the morning. After the morning devotion we get into the hall behind us and serve breakfast with them. We share breakfast which is mostly porridge, bread and sometimes when the funds allow we also add an egg or some sausages or smokies in the mix. So after breakfast ask the volunteers who actually fund the feeding program. What we do is we divide ourselves into different groups to do various activities and the activity number one which we usually start with is Shulem Tani. With Shulem Tani is teaching them basics in education from simple arithmetic in addition, subtraction, how to even write their names. After we are done with Shulem Tani some of the volunteers now go into doing first aid. We do first aid through their open wounds because they constantly come to us every Saturday with the open wounds, beat from fighting, maybe accidents or kibandia malaria and stuff like that. So we come, we nurse those open wounds and stuff like that. And then also it's during that time that we are able to sit down with them on one on one basis, get to know how their week was, what are the some of the challenges that they are going through and blah blah blah. And then another group, another group now from our volunteers they go down to the slums where we rented some of the girls some houses. We have some of the girls that we usually assist or rather who are street families is they also, most of them are HIV positive, they are those with young kids and they are young, blah blah blah and stuff like that. So when we go there where we rented for them some houses it's us getting to know how they are doing in the houses and then also it's a form of rehabilitation for them. It's also a place where we get to know how far are they away from now getting off there, the houses that we are renting for them to now go into their own houses and continue with the small scale business that usually start for them. Like for instance today here we are with Mzo. She also used to be among the girls who used to be in those houses but now she's gone off at the houses Kabisa, she's living on her own, she comes to help us out once in a while in the feeding program. She's also, we're also using her to inspire these other guys. So it's not just feeding program alone, it's the food that we use to bring them and then now with the food we can be after the food or before we even send them the food we're able to identify those who are serious and they are willing to get off the streets and join schools. These immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work towards the same goal. I represent an organization that is called Love for Child Association. I am the welfare coordinator over there with a group of other friends and Love for Child Association LOCA is as you see here today helping a lot of street kids, a lot of street families by helping to see how we can work together and how we can help to have them do their feeding, how to give them a better life but for starters for today what we are saying is we want to give them a decent meal. So LOCA members along with Joy Divine today we have met up and we have said that let us get together and give all these street families a decent food. So many of our friends outside have a lot of clothes which they don't wear and they will just throw them away. But when you come over here you'll see so many of this families not having decent clothes. So I would urge all of our friends that if you are having clothes and rather than throwing them away get in touch with us we would want all these families to come and have a decent clothes to wear. At the same time you'll see so many of these kids not having a decent meal and outside sometimes we are throwing this food away. Be it in churches, temples or functions, marriages sometimes the food just goes to waste. Nelson Mwangi tells us why this partnership is important to love for child accusation. We were invited here by the organizers of this program to come and see what they usually do and how we can be able to assist them. So that's why we and our members and some of our family members came on board to come and assist them. We are here, we came here in the morning we've done some breakfast with them we are almost doing lunch with them and we'll also have a moment with them so that we can talk to them and see how we can be able to inspire them and how we can be able to instill hope in them. This is what we usually do every month with other different programs and this is one of the programs that we have in today. So basically that is the reason as to why we came here in Blangokubo to come and assist where we can. Basically we realized that even starting from actually even in the it is bibiliko that in our regions and in our societies we'll be having poor people and the Bible recognizes that so it will be wrong for us to sit down and assume that there is nothing that we can be able to do. So we realized that as a young group where how can we be able to to inspire one another and how we can also be able to share the little things that we get here to ourselves how we can be able to share it with the rest of the community. So we got inspired by that that there are so many people out there whom we are living around with but we don't realize that they are needed. So that's why we are here today and in many other forums that we usually hear we usually have we usually have contributions that we usually make every every month towards the side of this program. That's why we are getting inspiration to come and assist them. Then also listening to some some success stories from a place like like Joy Divine it really gives us so much hope that there's a lot we need to do as a society there's a lot we need to do especially as young people to ensure that we can be able to assist and eradicate some of these menaces that we're experiencing in our in our country. Rita Mdoni, a mother of four tells us how this program has impacted her life. Angel Wolwira another beneficiary narrates how she ended up Umi bila nili kudakua street, siyesi raza duni mimi mezi stu ketu na medipati. Ndi kwa lmia kudanga kazi na lafiki yango. Tukapotea ano. Skwa kwa kuka, skwa kwa kuen na kama li paku lalangu. Asa meta niki kwa kondiki. Asa tudi misha yango zakua kua street. Na tem baka mawara rengine. Asu gwa nuangu, defi nangaku repi wa. Ndi kwa soja, siya nini misha kwa. Siya kwa, siya niki tembea tudi nime nyongu. Nongu ekangu shiikin katalawangu. So hangu wa pili, ba kia kwa ito pita mawanaiki. Baka tini di kwa na mimba ya mezi tisa. Kina kujifungu wa. Tukakwa matana etu kuru di siku mwona gahte na baka wa reo ii. Di kwa na first mwenu yango. Ndi kwa yasi yango sana. Baka ni ambiasi om zudu kwa siya mti toa inja. Anya shere, jwa reza kwanjeka. Katrem siya baka tini di kwa nyongu. Nini ya ni kafleja sana. Nini kwa ni maripazuri. Nini kwa sape kwa ni kabadirika. Skuwa na oganga. Skuwa na fuanga. Ata kupikia mti toa nishida. Nini kwa nishida. Na kula toza mborea. Siya jwa kwa kwa mti toa angu suwa kwa msafi. Na toa na impu. Niki sana kia ni gya omba. Kazi toa domini nge taka. This program has not biased those that need special attention in this society as well. Niki kwa na hoja maa naito maora. Aka kuja aka ni mbia kuna ano sayi dizi. Nesapata dali. Nini kwa na tembia nawiriki. Kiraches. Aka ni onia o Roma. Aka ni leti angari. Are you wondering how you can help out with a little help? He has an opportunity whereby call us as Loka. And we would try and collect that food and come and give it to the people you see whereby they can come and give this food and the decent food so they can get and something to eat. We are carrying out a limo policy whereby the kids who have performed well are able to have a decent education. So we as Loka we would wet them. We would see which kind of background they are coming from. And from there now we try and see if we can enroll them and give them a better life to live. Despite all the efforts put to ensure that this program is sustainable they have heard their share of challenges. Some of the challenges we faced is like extrajudicial killing. Killings where we buried a number of the young people who were previously on the streets. And not only because of the killings but also illness. They are exposed to the elements so they easily get ill and they succumb to their diseases. We are burying young people. We didn't sign up for this. We hoped that we'd rather buy school boxes and place these young people in schools. It's beyond our capability. So unless higher authorities if they seriously are deliberate to tackle it will still have a big number of these young boys and girls addicted and that will be beyond us. The other challenge is mental illness. A big number of these young people because of abusing drugs because of their traumatize from their past experiences are mentally unstable. They've got mental illnesses unless we get professionals, counselors and take them to proper rehabilitation centres we can't do much about it. The greatest desire that Frederick wishes to see come true. We want to give food for the sake of giving food. We want food to be the key for these children to take in the next chance or opportunity. That could be education, that could be job placement, that could be reintegration back to the families across the country. It's been a challenge but we've had very good friends and partners who are ready to facilitate and invest in terms of food support, in terms of the cooking equipment, in terms of even companies and corporates who stand up and partner with us for us to continue doing this. Our only challenge is having a security in terms of a facility that we know that we can do this uninterrupted and with a good will. We already have the good will of the community, we already have the good will of the young people but can we get this support moving forward? The authorities not see us as competitors but as facilitators and people who are ready just to make a difference in our community as young people. We've done this for such a long time almost for pro bono. We're willing to bring in more people to support this. But our goal is to see we don't want these children to remain on the streets any one day longer. We want to see them either back with their families, back in a school, back in a proper rehab center they get the rehab for drug abuse or just job placement. Keep them busy, keep them engaged or for them to do sports and things that they are good with in terms of their talents and their skills. So that's just our desire. Giving is not just about making a donation, it's about making a difference. Next time when you meet a poor or needy person consider giving it a put.