COVID-19: Children's Crisis Fund Gilgil, Kenya
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I began filming the street children of Gilgil in 2013 when I lived in Nairobi. I've seen girls as young as nine prostituting themselves to feed younger siblings still at home. I've seen brilliant eight and nine year old minds wasted daily on a street mix of cocaine and hash to numb out and summon courage to survive. I’ve interviewed gangs of hardened teenage street boys, eager to be recruited by extremist groups as a means to escape street life. COVID-19 is threatening to drag a whole new group of vulnerable children to the streets and hundreds of normally working mothers into prostitution.
Without food at home, hundreds more children in Gilgil, Kenya are at immediate threat of being driven to live on the streets like the boys we filmed in Gilgil cooking breakfast. COVID-19 has decimated the fragile economy in this rural town, 130km north of Nairobi. 4000+ people are registered as destitute. 300 are at critical risk of starvation. 1000s of parents have lost their livelihoods overnight and can't afford to feed their children. For those who had the capacity to earn money, they have now lost it with their humble businesses being closed due to lockdown. People here live hand to mouth. Today's earnings buys tomorrow's food.
I am organizing this Go Fund Me campaign and every single cent raised here will be spent buying food to feed these families. Food is purchased at wholesale cost in Nairobi, transported to Gilgil by donated trucks, packed into parcels and distributed door to door to the destitute. It's a 100% Kenyan community volunteer effort.
With USD$25, you can literally change the destiny of a child's life.
Please help. It's urgent. Here's how you can sustain these rescue efforts (please note amount is USD)
$25 = 1 person gets to eat for the next 2 weeks (1 food parcel)
$100 = 4 people get to to eat for the next 2 weeks (4 food parcels)
$500 = 20 people get to eat for the next 2 weeks (20 food parcels)
$1000 = 40 people get to eat for the next 2 weeks (40 food parcels)
To put it in perspective
To feed 300 most at risk for the next 2 months costs $30,000
To feed all 4000 destitute people for the next 2 months costs $400,000
Who we are
Team Pankaj, Nairobi, Kenya
Mary Coulson, Gilgil, Kenya
Lisa Fraser, Go Fund Me Organizer, Bay Area, California
Team Pankaj is a team of volunteers who have come together in immediate response to get food to starving people in Nairobi's slums since the COVID-19 outbreak. Pankaj Shah, who normally works as a Kenyan safari operator, is spearheading the enormous undertaking. In the last 15 days, Team Pankaj has fed 250,000 family members x 2 meals a day and 1000 children in 60 Nairobi orphanages. They are now co-ordinating food to reach Gilgil.
https://www.reuters.com/video/?videoId=OVC9QYZ5F&jwsource=cl
Mary Coulson, MBE, has lived in Gilgil for more than 50 years. She runs www.restartafrica.org, an extraordinary children’s home rescuing Gilgil’s street children. She knows the devastating consequences when mothers can’t put food on the table. Almost overnight the economic impact of COVID-19 hit Gilgil, prompting Mary to reach out to Pankaj to help her urgently purchase at cost food and transport it to Gilgil. In 2016, Mary was awarded an MBE for her contribution to the wellbeing of people in Gilgil. Restart is now home to 130 former street children & was featured on UK Channel 4’s Unreported World : 'Saving Kenya’s Street Kids'.
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/articles/all/saving-kenyas-street-kids/316
https://podbay.fm/podcast/428248421/e/1366362256
Mary is co-ordinating the volunteer rescue efforts in Gilgil with Restart staff, family and friends who have been paying for the food parcels out of their own pockets. They're working around the clock to pack the food from Nairobi into parcels, source waste stems and leaves from nearby small crops and get it to the people. Additionally, they're cooking up and serving 80 meals daily at Bridge of Hope orphanage that has run out of food for its orphans.
About the Go Fund Me Organizer
My name is Lisa Fraser. I am an Australian filmmaker based in California. In 2013, I moved to Nairobi and began filming Gilgil's street children every week over two years. Each year I return to film the children’s life stories of survival and extraordinary human spirit with the view to producing a documentary addressing the complexities of poverty in this town of 18,000+ people. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-fraser-501a4324
Our immediate goal is $30K
At this time we are seeking to help the most critically vulnerable people and have set our Go Fund Me target goal at $30K. But we ultimately feel a much larger goal must be targeted in order to realistically prevent this crisis from spiraling into a whole new cycle of childhood prostitution and crime. Please, if you can, contribute whatever is possible. Thank you, sincerely. And if you aren't in a position to help, please consider forwarding this on.
With love & our deepest thanks, from Africa, via the USA!
Note: Restart Africa which Mary runs, is a non-profit organization. However, because this is an immediate community response to COVID-19 crisis, and no funds are going to Restart, we can't assign fundraising through its non-profit status. Also, Team Pankaj is made up of volunteers rapidly assembled by Pankaj Shah in response to COVID-19. Additionally, because Go Fund Me currently does not permit monies to go directly to Africa, the organizer, Lisa Fraser (that's me!) is co-ordinating it from the USA. On a weekly basis, I will be sending every single cent to Mary Coulson via PayPal to purchase all the food for these Gilgil families. If you prefer to send a check/cheque or other form of payment, please contact me and I'd be happy to help make it work. Thank you.
Without food at home, hundreds more children in Gilgil, Kenya are at immediate threat of being driven to live on the streets like the boys we filmed in Gilgil cooking breakfast. COVID-19 has decimated the fragile economy in this rural town, 130km north of Nairobi. 4000+ people are registered as destitute. 300 are at critical risk of starvation. 1000s of parents have lost their livelihoods overnight and can't afford to feed their children. For those who had the capacity to earn money, they have now lost it with their humble businesses being closed due to lockdown. People here live hand to mouth. Today's earnings buys tomorrow's food.
I am organizing this Go Fund Me campaign and every single cent raised here will be spent buying food to feed these families. Food is purchased at wholesale cost in Nairobi, transported to Gilgil by donated trucks, packed into parcels and distributed door to door to the destitute. It's a 100% Kenyan community volunteer effort.
With USD$25, you can literally change the destiny of a child's life.
Please help. It's urgent. Here's how you can sustain these rescue efforts (please note amount is USD)
$25 = 1 person gets to eat for the next 2 weeks (1 food parcel)
$100 = 4 people get to to eat for the next 2 weeks (4 food parcels)
$500 = 20 people get to eat for the next 2 weeks (20 food parcels)
$1000 = 40 people get to eat for the next 2 weeks (40 food parcels)
To put it in perspective
To feed 300 most at risk for the next 2 months costs $30,000
To feed all 4000 destitute people for the next 2 months costs $400,000
Who we are
Team Pankaj, Nairobi, Kenya
Mary Coulson, Gilgil, Kenya
Lisa Fraser, Go Fund Me Organizer, Bay Area, California
Team Pankaj is a team of volunteers who have come together in immediate response to get food to starving people in Nairobi's slums since the COVID-19 outbreak. Pankaj Shah, who normally works as a Kenyan safari operator, is spearheading the enormous undertaking. In the last 15 days, Team Pankaj has fed 250,000 family members x 2 meals a day and 1000 children in 60 Nairobi orphanages. They are now co-ordinating food to reach Gilgil.
https://www.reuters.com/video/?videoId=OVC9QYZ5F&jwsource=cl
Mary Coulson, MBE, has lived in Gilgil for more than 50 years. She runs www.restartafrica.org, an extraordinary children’s home rescuing Gilgil’s street children. She knows the devastating consequences when mothers can’t put food on the table. Almost overnight the economic impact of COVID-19 hit Gilgil, prompting Mary to reach out to Pankaj to help her urgently purchase at cost food and transport it to Gilgil. In 2016, Mary was awarded an MBE for her contribution to the wellbeing of people in Gilgil. Restart is now home to 130 former street children & was featured on UK Channel 4’s Unreported World : 'Saving Kenya’s Street Kids'.
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/articles/all/saving-kenyas-street-kids/316
https://podbay.fm/podcast/428248421/e/1366362256
Mary is co-ordinating the volunteer rescue efforts in Gilgil with Restart staff, family and friends who have been paying for the food parcels out of their own pockets. They're working around the clock to pack the food from Nairobi into parcels, source waste stems and leaves from nearby small crops and get it to the people. Additionally, they're cooking up and serving 80 meals daily at Bridge of Hope orphanage that has run out of food for its orphans.
About the Go Fund Me Organizer
My name is Lisa Fraser. I am an Australian filmmaker based in California. In 2013, I moved to Nairobi and began filming Gilgil's street children every week over two years. Each year I return to film the children’s life stories of survival and extraordinary human spirit with the view to producing a documentary addressing the complexities of poverty in this town of 18,000+ people. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-fraser-501a4324
Our immediate goal is $30K
At this time we are seeking to help the most critically vulnerable people and have set our Go Fund Me target goal at $30K. But we ultimately feel a much larger goal must be targeted in order to realistically prevent this crisis from spiraling into a whole new cycle of childhood prostitution and crime. Please, if you can, contribute whatever is possible. Thank you, sincerely. And if you aren't in a position to help, please consider forwarding this on.
With love & our deepest thanks, from Africa, via the USA!
Note: Restart Africa which Mary runs, is a non-profit organization. However, because this is an immediate community response to COVID-19 crisis, and no funds are going to Restart, we can't assign fundraising through its non-profit status. Also, Team Pankaj is made up of volunteers rapidly assembled by Pankaj Shah in response to COVID-19. Additionally, because Go Fund Me currently does not permit monies to go directly to Africa, the organizer, Lisa Fraser (that's me!) is co-ordinating it from the USA. On a weekly basis, I will be sending every single cent to Mary Coulson via PayPal to purchase all the food for these Gilgil families. If you prefer to send a check/cheque or other form of payment, please contact me and I'd be happy to help make it work. Thank you.
Organizer
Lisa Fraser
Organizer
San Anselmo, CA
