Immediately the first Corona Virus case was discovered in Kenya way back in March 2020, the Government put in place various measures to help contain the spread and transmission among Kenyans. Some of the measures included, imposing a nationwide curfew and restricting people’s movement, keeping social distance, suspending public gatherings and as a result closure of all learning institutions, making it mandatory to wear masks besides all businesses and roadside vendors being required to have clean running water and soap.
Majority of these measures were impossible to observe in the slums. Korogocho slum, for example is characterized by poor infrastructure, with limited supply of clean water and improper drainage system. With a population of about 300,000 inhabitants pressed in a 1.5 square Kilometers space, most of the social amenities are either shared among many people or they lack entirely. Furthermore, the pandemic had already began causing huge challenges among the impoverished slum residents, including loss of their meagre sources of livelihoods, the abrupt closure of schools made children become depressed and the STAY-AT-HOME directive increased domestic violence especially among women and children.
Corona Virus was considered highly infectious and deadly, meaning if no intervention measures were put in place there was a huge risk of the pandemic resulting into a bigger crisis in Korogocho slum. We had to intervene, besides the pandemic imposed a greater risk of averting the positive impacts our project had made in empowering destitute children and uplifting the lives of the underprivileged slum dwellers in Korogocho slum.
With help from partners and supporters, we have been able to tremendously support the fight against Corona Virus pandemic in Korogocho slum by developing effective strategies to create awareness, increase sensitization and prevent infection and transmission of Corona Virus among Korogocho slum dwellers.
We are proud to have supported Korogocho slum in averting a possible crisis by developing measures that have played a vital role in lowering the rate of infection and transmission and easing the burden of slum residents during the most difficult and challenging times of Corona.
Our Covid interventions strategies and responses included;
You can watch here, a short documentary summarising our Covid Response in Korogocho slums.