In a recent interview with Melinda Gates about her book Moment to Lift, Brené Brown asked Melinda to tell her about the world we live in right now for women and girls globally and to describe the world she would love to see.
 
In honor of International Women’s Day today, I decided to interview our partners Veronica Lemuya in Kenya and Saroja Thota in India to ask them these same questions. 

Veronica’s answers are below along with pictures from their International Women’s Day celebration today with women and girls in the village.
 
Tell me about the world you see now for women and girls in your communities.

• There are inequalities in leadership. Though the Kenyan constitution supports women’s nominations, the society is still biased when electing and nominating women in leadership. Women are not appreciated as valuable contributors to a better future.
• Early marriage is still promoted among girls.  Many in the Turkana culture still view girls as objects to be married off for wealth.
• Illiteracy is still high among girls.  Due to cultural beliefs that do not value education for girls, there are girls in the village who have never had the opportunity to go to school, and they are looking after their parent’s animals.

 
Describe the world you'd like to see.

• I look forward to seeing an economically empowered, resilient girl child who can effectively support her family’s future.
• I’d like to see women of faith stand up to protect, advocate and pray for their families. Women are the foundation of resilient and strong families. Spouses should support each other,  empower each other economically, and be willing to pursue each other’s dreams without gender bias.
• I’d like to see professional women take their rightful place in the frontlines to support the government and the church in fighting early marriages and abuse of the fundamental rights among young girls.
• I want to see women in the lower cadre to be able to rise up to know their rights and strengthen their capacity to protect and advocate for their rights and the rights of their children.

 
What are your hopes and dreams? 

• I want to empower young women and children with important information to be good agents for social change.
• I hope to develop mentoring programs that will reform the thinking around women as partners in development as opposed to only being seen as housewives.
• I hope to support education for women and children in our society as a socioeconomic equalizer. 

Saroja’s answers are below along with pictures of her with some of the women in the sewing program and some of the girls in our sponsorship program. 
 
Tell me about the world you see now for women and girls in your communities.
Our society is a male-dominated society; moreover, women are not given priority in the home and are not treated as equals to men. In my experience of life, in my professional world and in my ministry in working with women, women are never able to share their opinions boldly or freely.  They have to follow the instructions given by their parents or by their husband.  Even today, women in our community do not have financial freedom, and in a marriage, everything depends on the views and opinion of the husband. Even though India is an independent country, women in our community still do not have independence.
 
Describe the world you'd like to see.

• I would like to see every girl and woman being able to have independent views for her future.
• I’d like for every girl to have sufficient education to earn for  their livelihood.
• I would like to see freedom of speech in regard to women being able to share their opinions in our community.  

 
What are your hopes and dreams? 
I want to help empower more women in India so that we can bring all these above points into reality by educating women as well as men in the proper way.  Through the sewing program we have established for women, we are working on giving women skills and empowering them to have financial independence. See this site for photos of what the women have created.  I feel fortunate to work with them and teach them important skills to overcome so many problems. 

​Students returned to school in January in Kenya, and new school guidelines were put in place to ensure student safety including required temperature checks, hand-washing stations, face masks, and social distancing measures.

Our team in Kenya started the year off by bringing hope and support to over 8000 students in the area as they helped to provide some of these new requirements for 16 schools in need of supplies to help control the spread of Covid-19 and to keep the children healthy. At the beginning of January, the Children of the Kingdom team distributed 250 face masks, 70 water containers and stands for the hand-washing stations, 1000 liters of liquid soap, and 100 hand pump bottles for classrooms. 

​If you would like to support this effort to provide more sanitizing stations to more schools, click below. 

The holiday season is full of lots of emotions. Yes, there is joy as we celebrate the birth of Christ as our broken world so desperately needs God's love to break through. And yet, there is also so much to grieve from this last year that has been lost.
 
“The 'hopes and fears of all the years' meet in Jesus; and a 'weary world rejoices' at his coming. Hope doesn't replace fear; it invades it. Rejoicing doesn't replace weariness; it inhabits it."  - Scotty Smith

Despite the odds in 2020, Veronica (our Kenyan director) and Ratnakar (our Indian director) loved our children well this year, and Children of the Kingdom did not miss a beat in supporting kids and families.  Though schools were shut down for many months this year, we were still able to meet our mission in sharing the love of Christ with children in need, and I am filled with gratitude and joy to share the following things that we accomplished in Kenya and India: 

• Over a month’s supply of food was distributed to over 1000 families.
• 1700 masks were given to families and to the community.
• Fresh drinking water was distributed to three villages.
• Detergent, soap and hand sanitizer for families and schools were delivered to keep them healthy.
• Houses were built for four families who needed shelter.
• 14 laptops were purchased to support students with online learning.
• Medical treatment was provided to children and families who were sick.

 
We are so grateful for your support and the work we do together in this ministry. Thank you for your generosity which has made such a difference in this unprecedented year.
 
May the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven, shine on those living in darkness and guide our feet into the path of peace. (see Luke 1:77-78)
 
Happy New Year, 
Emily Huff 
USA Director 

On this Christmas day, we are giving thanks for the tender mercies of our God in this past year for the children and families in Children of the Kingdom.  May He continue to give light to the darkness and guide us in the way of peace into 2021. 

This is a summary of the report written by Veronica Lemuya about how students are coping with school closures and online learning. (Be sure to watch the video below to get a window into what it is like for students to keep up with their studies in Kenya.) 

When the pandemic emerged in March, many learning institutions in Kenya decided to close schools, colleges and universities under the direction from the Ministry of Education, the Education Task Force and the Kenya National Union for Teachers.  Policymakers are facing the same issues in Kenya as other countries around the world as they weigh the options between closing schools (reducing contact and saving lives) and keeping them open (allowing workers to work and maintaining the economy).  Students have been out of school since March, and this disruption has taken its toll on so many students and families in Kenya. Beginning in October, the Kenyan government opted to introduce online schooling for the second term for 4th year students (12th grade) and students in their last year of college.

Online schooling has been a significant shock to parents’ productivity and to children's social life and learning.

Students and their families are facing many challenges through online learning:   

• There is a lack of electricity and power in homes as not all students live in permanent houses with proper power supplies.
• Some students don’t have smartphones/laptops/tablets to access online classes.
• There are regular connectivity problems, and there is limited access to reliable networks.
• One of our students cited a scenario where she was given an assignment to print. She came to the Children of the Kingdom office to print the assignment, and then she had to complete it and send it to the lecturer through the mail.  Systems such as this are inefficient and time-consuming. 
• There is a lack of space for learning at home.
• Student assessments are also moving online which involve much trial and error and generate uncertainty for everyone. Many assessments have simply been cancelled. 

Importantly, these interruptions in learning will not just be a short-term issue, but they will also have long-term consequences for the affected cohorts and are likely to increase inequality. Furthermore, plans for the re-opening of schools are still not in place because many schools have not yet complied with COVID–19 health and safety regulations.

This past week, our dear partners in ministry in India were able to distribute food and basic medication to over 100 families along with 200 masks thanks to the generous support of our sponsors.   30 of these families have children sponsored in Children of the Kingdom, 20 of them have women who are a part of a sewing ministry we have partnered with over the years, and 50 families have children affected by HIV/AIDS who are in need of support.  

As we mark the anniversary today of 9/11 and as we continue to grapple with the effect of COVID-19 worldwide, the ongoing exposure and cost of racism, and now with massive fires burning in the western US, it is clear that 2020 has put us in a state of emergency again and again. 

I offer you this prayer below as you hold all these things and look to God to be our unshakable hope in this time of great need. 

A Liturgy for Moments of Emergency: 
O God our Rock, hold us in this chaos. 
O Christ our King, calm us in this season. 
O Holy Spirit, intercede for us. 
Be merciful, most merciful God! 
O God our Rock, hold us in the chaos of this hard hour. 
O Christ our King, calm us in the storm of our distress. 
O Holy Spirit, intervene and intercede. 
We need you now, most merciful God. 
-Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy 

This is a summary of the report written by Veronica Lemuya about our second food distribution in Kenya.
​
As locusts destroyed the vegetation in Turkana and other parts of Kenya in June and July with the worst locust outbreak in decades, the rich are no longer rich, and the poor are poorer than before. This became a crisis within a crisis dealing with the locusts on top of the country’s fight against the spread of COVID-19.  Not only this, but this spring, there was a flood that took out the water supply for some families in Lodwar for a time, and there was even an earthquake that unsettled many families. The resulting economic devastation has left many children and families suffering from the loss of employment and income and not enough food and water. 

Children of the Kingdom has stepped in during July to support 564 Turkana families (160 sponsored and 406 non-sponsored families).  The first distribution of emergency relief was shared with 300 families in May, the first water distribution took place in June reaching three villages, and this second food distribution was just completed in mid-July.  Since schools were not in session for the second term, we utilized those funds that would have been used for school fees to support children and families in this time of great need. 

​Our mission is “to share God’s love with children in need through the gift of education to equip them to be servants in the kingdom,” and our ministry was able to provide critical support to families with some of our current and former students leading the group of volunteers to make the distributions happen.    
​

In this second food distribution, the food was delivered house to house in line with regulations laid out by the Kenya Ministry of Health. The following food items were delivered to each household: 10 kg maize, 10 kg maize flour, 10 kg beans, 3 kgs sugar, 500 g of fresh and dried fruit, 1 cabbage, 500 g onion, 1 kg tomatoes, 1 kg potatoes, 500 g salt, 250 g tea leaves, 500 g washing detergent, and 2 bars of soap. 
​

Veronica Lemuya, our new director, has hit the ground running and has already done more in a month than most people are able to pull off in an entire year.  After just one week in the office, she had already made rounds to visit several families and students in the program to survey the needs of the community.  She found that the majority of families whom she visited were struggling to put food on the table, and they also needed more information on COVID-19 and on precautions to take to prevent the spread of the disease.   She reported that adolescent girls needed sanitary pads as these are normally distributed at boarding schools, and many of them cannot afford them now. Her visits were also important to let families know they had somewhere to turn if they were in need of resources and support.  Being on lockdown means that people must stay at home, but homes might not always be safe as some students might be at higher risk for sexual/domestic abuse during this time of COVID-19.      

​From her initial report, we worked on a budget to pay for some of the most pressing needs that families shared with her including food and other supplies as outlined in the caption above.  We were able to draw $15,000 from our 2019 Rafiki Run contributions and from other generous donations for this emergency fund.  Over the last two weeks, she recruited former Children of the Kingdom graduates and others in the community to help with the distribution. Veronica shared that some of the volunteers expressed how meaningful it was to be a part of the distribution as they were able to see the needs of the community for themselves, and it was a way for them to give back to the program which had supported them.  

She reported that this verse below was the theme verse of the distribution:   

​Veronica shared, “I could see the joy in the eyes of the children and their mothers. Many were breaking down in tears. I could hear them saying "Ejok noi" (Turkana for “Thank you”) and "Asante Sana" (Kiswahili for “Thank you”), and they wanted me to convey that message from the Turkana children to the Children of the Kingdom family in the US….The entire exercise was an eye opener to me. It’s a call to pray, to reach out to the children, and to give them a shoulder to lean on sharing with them their challenges and walking with them step by step.”