Thank you to our one in a million international family of fundraisers that make up the Pepo La Tumaini UK charity. Every year they dedicate their time and resources to come down to the programme and interact with our staff, children and community members deepening their understanding of how people work together. Some longstanding members Maria, Joe & Catriona have witnessed our children grow up into talented young adults and new members Andrew & Pamela are passionate & excited to join us with new ideas and fresh perspectives on how we can secure the future for all the fantastic work being done. Asante sana to all the leaders and stakeholders who came to celebrate our efforts and helped to make this years AGM such a special one to remember.

During the board visit we found out that there is still a need to model a more inclusive and holistic approach to health and education for the poor and marginalized communities who still cannot access basic rights to health, education and legal frameworks. As well as stigma and discrimination there is a considerable lack of appropriate and relevant opportunities that meet the needs of this target population in Isiolo. We also highlighted the importance of continuing to provide crisis relief from natural disasters such as drought, insecurity and disease, which all affect our community groups that provide free mother-care support, home based care and community health outreach services.

“There is a strong need for us now to respond to our volunteers who are doing outreach work in the rural and hard to reach areas caring for those who are terminally sick, those who are defaulting off their ARV treatment, individuals and families living in extreme poverty.” Sarah Kruger (Executive Director)

All of our activities at Pepo La Tumaini are interconnected, which creates the need to constantly re-prioritise as there is no stand alone activity that can function without the others. This is both our greatest strength and greatest challenge as we now try to deconstruct our activities and ask ourselves honestly what we spend most of our time doing and what we spend most of our funds on.

We are extremely excited to welcome Lisa Lubbock & Roxane Marmion, long standing supporters who are now heading our fundraising committee in the UK. They have spent the last 6 months organising and planning the Winds of Hope Ball to highlight our achievements and the need for your continued support. Joining us will be our long term benefactor Christiane Amanpour CBE, the acclaimed international journalist and Chief International Correspondent for CNN. The evening of fine dining, auction prizes and dancing will be hosted at the Savoy Hotel in London on the 1st February 2018. If you would like any further information on how to obtain tickets please email tumainirsvp@yahoo.com

During this election period Pepo La Tumaini has been playing a pivotal role in facilitating peace discussions among the various tribal groups and political candidates. Fearing the threats and incitation towards violence and protest we rallied over 7 different tribal groups together and facilitated a peace parade through town with over 500 people (which we called the peace caravan). We involved all county representatives including the District County Commissioner, heads of security and community chiefs who all spoke about the importance of ensuring peaceful elections. We were commended by county officials during following District Steering Group (DSG) meetings for our leadership role in resolving conflict and securing peace.

As a selected African Visionary Fellow, Director Khadija Omar joined other Segal partners from all over Africa and partnering international donors at the SFF annual meeting in New Jersey in September. Khadija held a panel discussion about understanding more about grassroots organisations and why they should be given more attention by donors. She highlighted the need for a more holistic approach to measuring success and appealed for more attention to be given to the why and how when evaluating our success.
 
Thank you to Project Officer Gidibo Tindwa from Segal Family Foundation who came to spend the day with us listening to our community members and the current issues and challenges facing our people. The nature of our extreme environmental conditions and our diverse social fabric means that it is often very hard to communicate effectively why we do what we do and how we achieve our results. We are extremely grateful to SFF for their partnership and support in helping us to get our story out to a wider network and for strengthening our resources to enable us to keep doing what we do best; which is sustaining people and life in the face of disease, natural disasters, violence and poverty.

We currently have 17 HBC (Home Based Carers) who are taking care of 40 sick people in their homes, receiving support, goods and treatment from us such as nutrition, first aid, diapers, towels, bandages, hygiene supplies. We also continue to support the burials for people who have been abandoned by the families due to stigma related to HIV and poverty. At our clinic we have 303 HIV +ve patients currently under our care receiving free ARV drugs and additional nutrition and well-being support.

We are still the only non-governmental facility in Isiolo to be delivering family planning services especially to the youth. In the last 3 months our Community Healthcare Workers (CHWs) succeeded in giving out 102 emergency contraceptives and 35 courses of Post- Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) treatment to prevent possible HIV infection among mothers and children who had been victims of rape.
 
The topic of sexual health among the youth remains a huge challenge to address in Isiolo due to cultural and religious norms. A new partnership with Planned Parenthood Global is enabling us to address some of the problematic issues currently facing young people under 25 yrs old such as the increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unplanned pregnancies which is increasing the school drop out rate, drug use, DIY abortions and prostitution. We are now facilitating community leader discussions to determine the way forward in addressing the lack of knowledge, exposure to social media and new merging cultures in the face of such rapid modernisation.

So far we have educated over 500 students in Tumaini Senior School since 2008. The team at Tumaini are busy now tracking our graduates to find out what they are up to now? We have managed to collect information on 69 alumni and found out that most of them are working in Nairobi either running their own business or working in trade skills such as painting, metal work and masonry.
 
When we asked the young people why they chose their current professions most replied “because It’s what we know how to do well”. This goes to show that the skills students learn at Tumaini really do shape them into young professionals. We hope to build up the portfolio of alumni as we continue tracking our old students. It is our hope that the future and sustainability of Pepo La Tumaini lies in the hands of our alumni such as Mohammed Adan from the class of 2009 who is currently working with us at the programme while training in IT and accounting.

CURRENT OCCUPATION: 

• Formal Employment - 12
• Informal Employment - 10
• Trade work - 15
• Self-employed (own business) - 19

• University - 4
• Married with families - 2
• PLTJ Mentorship - 3

We would like to thank NDL Foundation for donating a new 34 seater school bus from our wish list. This now means our children can go safely on school trips without having to use public transport which ends up being costly and unreliable. We would also like to thank the Ambassador for Foreign Affairs Amina Mohamed for her recognition and visit to us in July when she awarded us with a new computer and printer for Tumaini Senior School. Mama Ibaado charity donated a further 10 desk top computers, which have enabled us to set up a computer lab at school for both pupils and staff who now have weekly IT classes. Thank you as well to Kate Spencer who donated boxes of books for our library and organised a trip to Lewa Education Centre for our students during the holidays giving them an opportunity to mix with Kate’s group of international volunteers and travellers.

Thanks to all our friends and families who support us and the following institutions:

• Mama Ibaado Charity, Canada
• Ministry of Health, Kenya
• Isiolo County Government
• Ministry of Education, Kenya
• Kemsa, Kenya
• PSI, Kenya
• International Medical Corps
• Lewa Wildlife Conservancy
• Sirikoi Lodge

• Go Up Web Design
• Segal Family Foundation, USA
• Planned Parenthood Global, USA
• TJ Meyer Family Foundation
• Tara House Montessori, London
• The NDL Foundation
• Glencore UK
• Swiss Foundation (Anonymous)
• Education is Power, Canada

You can find out more about the charity on our new website www.pepolatumaini.org and follow our activities and achievements on Facebook and Instagram @pepolatumaini.