Community Service Projects
The most effective way to learn is by experience. We encourage children to apply the creative problem solving skills that they learn in NOVICE Courses into making real-life improvement in their villages and schools. Community service projects may be to clean up the beach, improve the sanitation standard of the school toilets or to launch a campaign to promote good hygiene practice. Such an exposure will help children to sharpen their creativity in a practical way, deepen their rootedness in their community, and gain higher self-confidence.
Computer Room for Bright Girls Secondary School in Shela
To provide girls modern academics, computers are a necessity. By building this computer room we enlarge their scope. Students will be able to communicate and grow up with equal possibilities as students in cities or other countries. For the moment the computer room is used for daily health exercises, breathing and pranayama.
Sanitation Pads for Girls
Through a donor we are able to supply four schools in Lamu with sanitation pads for girls. We promote equal opportunities for girls and boys to attend school.
Social Entrepreneurship Projects
We are passionate to help youth translate their learning and ideas into action. The best way to do this is to support them to experientially plan, prepare, launch and manage their self-help projects for income generation. By sharpening their entrepreneurship know-how and skills, we will empower our youth to become self-reliant and more able to help not only themselves, but to help others to get out of the poverty cycle.
LAMU KAYA
Homemade spread that makes bread & chapatti come tastefully alive!
Lamu Kaya is a unique bread spread recipe that promises a delightful breakfast experience filled with distinctive Lamu taste and flavours.
Lamu Kaya is a social enterprise initiative under Hands Up For Kids to empower youth to be entrepreneurial and self-reliant. Sale proceeds will support local youth to pursue further education.
Past Projects
In 2010 we made our first distribution to 2 schools on Faza. The town of Rasini suffered a severe fire in September 2009 and much of the town was destroyed. Art of Living members in Kenya generously collected money and, after a visit and meetings with the Headteachers we decided to donate sports equipment. We provided kits for football, volleyball and netball to Rasini Girls’ School and Faza Boys’ School, as well as sanitary towels for the girls.
Wiyoni Primary School
The Wiyoni school, just outside of Lamu Town, has around 500 pupils. Unfortunately, the school was built on reclaimed land and during the rainy season the rain goes directly into the buildings so the building was desperately in need of gutters to channel and conserve the rainwater. Thanks to 2 donations, one from an American sponsor and the other from the European School in Bergen, The Netherlands, we were able to first present sports and sanitary equipment to the school and have fixed gutters to the buildings to collect the rainwater. A letter of gratitude that we received from the Headteacher Mr Raphael says “As we speak, water is being stored in tanks and this will enable us to upgrade the environment through tree planting projects that require water for success. The same water storage will enable us improve the sanitation and hygiene in the school as this is vital for school going children who require a lot of cleanliness to prevent disease outbreaks common in our region.” From working with the Wiyoni Primary School, we have created awareness amongst the children: about the dangers of HIV/AIDS and drug abuse, as well as the need for environmental conservation, and now, the children are encouraged to set up forums to discuss issues and take action.
Projectin Kawangare, Nairobi
Children’s Garden Home & School is a children’s home for abused, mistreated, exploited, exposed to child labour, abandoned children and orphans.The home, which is in Kawangare slum, Nairobi, offers a home for more then 200 children and also provides free school for children of the slums, which makes areach out of more then 350 children.
From September till November 2010 Art of Living Netherlands, with Hands Up 4 Kids started with special stress and trauma releasing programs and youth empowerment programs through breathing and yoga techniques for the staff and children, as described in our MDG#8.
• CGH Director Moses Ngungu and his wife Silvia, together with their staff first attended the Art of Breathing course
• The first week of October a full month long every morning at 7 am with half an hour yoga, breathing exercises and meditation before school with the secondary school (teenagers)
• More then 120 children from the primary school first joined BreathWater Sound course in 3 separate courses, then also start doing every morning early yoga, breathing & meditation session before class
• Everyday singing bhajans and gospel, both for Satsang and practicing for the Children’s Garden Choir
• The month long morning sessions were completed with a big ART Excel and YES!Course for all the children in the last week of October/first week of November. Art of Living teacher Kim Hartman from Holland/Netherlands was invited for a week stay for teaching both courses and all together more then a hundred children and teenagers have been taught.
• As a project during the YES! Course with the teenagers, a‘bhajan-gospel’ CD was recorded, with the children’s choir. With a portable digital recorder thirteen songs, a mixture of Indian bhajans, English gospel and traditional African Swahili gospel have been recorded.
• The proceeds from the CD sales will go to two projects
