panda! Rehabilitation Programme

Dear friends on Betterplace,

our project is quite new and we are still working to complete our first magazine and need to find out, if we are really able to complete a whole magazine – and that best every month. Once we are sure that this will work, we will look for business people in Nakuru who want to advertise in our magazine. The first talks with restaurants, banks and supermarkets have been promising. Nakuru is a growing town, a lot of new businesses and shops are opening and there is no more room for banners over the streets for more advertisement. Advertisement in national newspapers is expensive and makes no sense for local businesses … so why should we not be welcomed. Long live the streetlife magazine! First when we can be sure, that the magazine will work, we will invite more street kids to our program. Currently we are looking for candidates amongst them, talking to them, explaining what we are planning. We already got a school house, which we can use for trainings. There, the children can stay over the day, play, participate in workshops or just talk to the volunteers who will offer counseling, too. If they participate in trainings, they also will get lunch there. That way we can take them off the streets over the day … and later, this is still a dream, we will give them also a place to sleep. Currently this exceeds our budget. We would need more space and qualified people which would care for them day and over the night … but this is a dream we share, a goal, for what it is worth continuing our work. Everyone has to start small … many thanks to the donor who made it possible that we could offer some medical care to some street kids already. They are often in a bad physical condition. But the medical support will help winning their trust. That will help us later in the project.

Our project should sustain itself through the income of the magazine selling and advertisement … so why are we asking you here to support us with your donation? This is a sub-project which we also want to foster. A Betterplace service for people who have not the equipment to enter their needs here on Betterplace. Due to the work with the magazine we have a computer and internet access and can offer this service to people we know. People volunteering their time to our project often are also involved in other projects in the slums around Nakuru. They meet a lot of poor families in need. We want to support them also in that work. A lot of people in Nakuru do not have a job but nevertheless they spend a lot of their time working as volunteer on social projects. Often it was difficult for me to understand how they succeed in making their living and also spending most of their time for the street kids and old and sick people in the slums around Nakuru. For example our chairman Duncan, I would like to call him a professional volunteer and would like to thank him for his great work. He is supporting a lot of poor families around Nakuru and with my engagement here on Betterplace I also would like to support him with that work. By supporting these poor families in the slums, we hope to avoid that some children also leave their families for the reason of not getting any food, ending up roaming in the streets of Nakuru.

With our project we want to show that something can be done even without big financial support from other countries or organizations. Nevertheless, we also need capital to start the program and therefore asking here for your support.

Kind regards, Anne Führmann