Pendo Machakos Chapter Community Based Organization is a registered Community based organization with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development in Machakos District, Machakos County, Kenya. Our primary goal is to help eradicate poverty in Machakos District, Kenya; through giving micro-finance to the poor people in the famine and drought hit areas of this district. Pendo works with individuals as well as self-help groups that are registered with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Community development in Machakos District in Machakos County, Kenya. However, we also identify individuals and put them in teams and facilitate them to work as a team together. Our mission is to help them with micro-financing facility that offers minimal interest. The main goal of Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO is to work closely with individuals and groups to establish a viable sustainable business ventures that will guarantee them sustainable income and make a difference in their lives by improving their social, physical and economic status.
PEMACHA CBO also offers scholarships to bright youths from the poor families of Machakos District to help facilitate them to have unfettered access to higher education in High Schools, Colleges and Univeristies. PEMACHA CBO also runs a resource centre or a library from where the youths in primary schools, High Schools, colleges and Universities can be loaned books to study as well as do research. The library also organizes for seminars and workshops as well as counseling sessions for those struggling with marital issues and those dealing with drug addictions. It has proved helpful to many youths who are dealing drugs and are willing to go through rehabilitation process from these poor families. We embrace a holisitic approach in our drive to alleviate poverty from these famine and drought hit areas of Machakos District.
Pendo also has a famine relief arm that gives temperol food donations during extreme times of famine to help alleviate hunger in these famine and drought hit areas of Machakos District in Machakos County, where the majority of poor people reside. We consider what we are doing as a noble task of helping people make a difference in their own life and that of their society.
Goals and Objectives
The name of the organization is Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO. Its goal is to give micro-finance loans to the poor in famine and drought hit areas of Machakos District in Machakos County, Kenya. PEMACHA CBO also gives famine relief to the poor during times of famine and drought and considers bright students from famine and drought hit areas for tuition scholarships to enable them have access to higher education in order to make a difference in their lives as well as their families and society.
In order to prepare the individuals and self-help group projects to benefit from our organization, we make arrangements and bring a technical team of trainers from our local Banks or Universities to help train them on how to manage small businesses with micro-finance loans. The training is for free and is aimed at giving the people involved skills to help them manage the small businesses that they begin with the money advanced to them as loans by Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO. We also help in donating free food to those who are suffering with no income at all in the famine and drought hit areas.
We work in liaison with the registered self-help groups leaders, Local Administration and churches in the geographical areas affected in order to effectively administrer such a programme. Our vision is driven by drive to help alleviate poverty in this District of Machakos in line with the Vision 2030 of the Government of Kenya to alleviate poverty.
Problems Targetted and Proposed Solutions
The problem of poverty in the famine and drought hit areas is caused by poor rainfall in these areas of Machakos District. Most of the targetted people in the District of Machakos that PEMACHA CBO targets depend on two rain seasons for their subsistence. The rainfall is not enough for the farmers to sustain a good yield of crops from their farms. The critical problem in this area is that some rain seasons are unreliable to nurture the crops. They start to rain and before the plants mature, the rain disappears and the farmers get nothing or very little yield from their farms, which cannot help to sustain them until the next rain season.
The farmers also depend on the yield from their farms to sell and send their children to school. So, when the rains are not sufficient to nurture the crops to maturity, the farmers do not get good yield from their farms. This eventuality disrupts their plans and they end up depending on food doantions from the Government or non-Governmemtal Organizations, which comes in short supply and are distributed in a corrupt way to the recipients.
In these areas of Machakos District, there are some bright children who manage to perform very welll in their national examinations. Bur due to the drawback of availability of regular revenue, they miss out to join high school, tertiary institutions, colleges or universities. Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO believes that the bright children must be given access to all forms of education that they have the potential to rise up to the challenge. Pendo believes these children given opportunity they can make a difference in their lives as well as in the society. Pendo provides that enabling environment that facilitates the children to acquire relevant knowledge and skills through higher learning. It is through granting educational scholarships that we help in fostering social integration and broaden the students worldview and knowledge perspectives. The acquired knowledge will not only help the local people, but also the nation of Kenya. That is why we treat awarding of scholarships to the bright but yet less fortunate youths as a matter of utmost urgency.
We believe education is one of the essential ways forward which will propel change of attitude in these drought and famine hit areas of Machakos District. An educated person is always forearmed and we believe anyone who learns through acquiring knowledge will eventually change his attitudes, thinking and way of doing things. We at Pendo Machakos Chapter believe learning means change and this is one of our primary objectives that we love to accomplish in these isolated poor and famine hit areas of Machakos District.
The downside to this development is that some of the young people who cannot go without food, join gangs and take law into their own hands and begin committing crimes to help them survive. This disrupts order and the level of insecurity goes up. The fight for the few resources available that people have is also high, and the conflicts that are generated from this developments add on to the district administration, some additional things to worry about. The District administration has so much to worry about and at the moment they are spread so thin as far as meeting these insecurity challenges are concerned. This means something needs to be done to help alleviate or stamp out poverty from this affected areas in order to stabilize the environment and society at large. Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO provides that avenue to help alleviate such eventualities by facilitating education, micro-finace and relief food to these areas.
For instance, in the last rain season farmers faired poorly in their yield becuse the rain season was not sufficient. The yield that they realised was so little and they consumed it while it was in the farms. Majority of the families now are looking up to the government and non-governmental organizations to donate food to them. The problem is so acute that even the govenment officers have given some families permission to begin begging for food in the streets of Machakos Town. This dire situation needs to be addressed urgently. Some children cannot attend primary or High school education, because their parents have no money to buy them school uniforms and they can’t make it through the day in school because of hunger. The Children prefer to stay at home and loiter around in the neighbourhood villages looking for food, or stealing it instead of going to suffer in the classrooms, whose benefits are yet future.
Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO has seen this need and wants to partner with organizations that are of the same vision and are willing to help alleviate this deep seated problem in Machakos District. We help people to come up with realistic small businesses that can be sustained through our micro-finance facility and help them make a difference in their lives, their families and the society. When the situation is tough to all families in the society, we provide food donation that keeps these struggling poor people going. More important to us as a community based organization is the scholarship programme that helps to enlighten the children of the poor people to begin aspiring for a brighter future by providing financial assistance that facilitates them to have favorable access to educational institutions and other avenues.
Methodology and Timeline of Poverty Alleviation in Machakos District
The focus of Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO is three-fold. First, we want to try and alleviate poverty in the famine and drought affected areas of Machakos District through giving micro-finance to the individuals and self-help groups to begin sustainable small businesses that will help make a difference in their social, physical and economic lives. Secondly, we also give food donations as a temperol measure to some of the poor people in these areas, who need food to help them survive the famine and drought effects in their region before the coming of the rain season. Thirdly, we also give scholarships to help educate some bright students in the community, who get good passing grades to enter high school, tertiary or university level of education and their families financial background cannot afford to facilitate them to have access to this form of higher education. This three-fold agenda is an urgent challenge in this region and we believe we have made some commendable progress in mobilizing people and encouraging parents to impress upon their children on the need to pursue further education as one of the ways to alleviate poverty in Machakos District of Kenya.
Pendo is working on a timeframe of ten years to make sure that we have attained our objectives that are set for the targetted groups. Primarily, our main objective is to alleviate poverty by targeting a group of one thousand people from different families and areas who live in these famine and drought prone areas of Machakos District in Machakos County, Kenya. We hope to accomplish this through helping them to acquire micro-finance to begin and sustain small businesses, provide tuition scholarship to the bright students who perform well in their national exams and their parents or guardians are not financially capable of paying for their higher education. Our target is that within ten years Pendo Machakos Chapter would have made a difference in the lives of people in these areas and would have enabled them to improve socially, economically and also physically.
Majority of the people we are working with in these communities have the ability to make a difference in their own life and they lack the means and resources to enable them improve their economic and social standing in this region. We do have available individuals and self-help groups, but we do not have sufficient financial resources to facilitate them. The need we are addressing is real because people in these areas are going for several days without food, children get good passing grades and they cannot afford to join institutions of higher learning because the parents are not able to pay for their academic pursuits. That is why many are willing to begin small businesses and small projects that can help them improve their economic status but they have no means to do so. This is where Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO comes in to bridge the gap by providing the resources that the people need to make a difference in their lives.
Benefits arising from Solving these Problems
Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO exists to help bridge the poverty gap in these famine and drought hit areas of Machakos District. Through its micro-finance facility, Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO helps the individuals and self-help groups to come up with businesses or projects that will generate income for them and sustain their living standards. This takes into consideration a small business or project that will continue giving the families regular income that they can rely on daily or monthly and a steady income that will help them make plans with the school administration on how to clear their children’s school bills on time and without much strain.
Moreover, the scholarship programme also goes a long way to enhance the recipients perception of the benefits of education. Many children or youths who acquire knowledge and skills through education in turn channel the educational benefits to help transform the thinking of the people in his/her locality. Once the beneficiaries graduate from their academic programmes, we trust they will be employed and in turn channel the benefits that acccrue from employment to help themselves and the members of their immediate family and well as their villages. This sponsorship programme helps the youth from these areas to study hard in order to benefit from the programme. The programme has brought a lot of change to the youth. We have begun with a few youths and we believe that if we get partners who have the same passion of alleviating poverty in this region as we are, we will together as a team make a difference in this region and celebrate with the recipients the joys of alleviating poverty in their lives as well as their region.
Furthermore, Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO also runs a resource centre for children and youths who are in school and pursuing higher education. Gemsbak Library Services (http://gemsbak.weebly.com/index.html) exists to provide primary, High school, College and University going students with a place to read from, loan books, and do research work for college and university level disciplines. It is located in Machakos Town, which is a central place accessible to all our benficiaries. Our drive in establishing this facility was to improve the reading culture among the people and contribute towards the growth of an informed population of the nation of Kenya.
The food donation project helps greatly those who have nothing at all to live on. It may be viewed as a temporal relief by many and that is why we begin by temporarily alleviating the hunger challenge and then go on to these other programmes run by Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO. The food donations help to alleviate malnutrition in young children as well as the youth and provide sustenance to the families for a few days.
These are the benefits that Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO is realizing and would love to continue realizing with your partnership and sponsorship.
The Necessary Resources needed for the Success of the Project
For us to continue making this alleviation of poverty a reality in Machakos District, we have targetted a time-frame of ten years in the area, where we have targetted isolated individuals and self-help groups to work with in order to make a difference in the physical, social and economic status of the people that we are working with to alleviate poverty. We need to raise US$ 3,620,000.00 to cover the budget that we have projected for the next ten years. The budget targets 3000 people from different families and covers the following items:
To contact us write to: Dr. Bernard K. Nzioka, Regional Director, Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO, P.O.Box 2549 -90100, Machakos, Kenya. Cell: 0714464030. E-mail: [email protected]
Write your designated checks payable to Pendo Machakos Chapter CBO.