The Great Need in Nairobi

Nearly 2.5 million people live in poverty in the slums and urban areas of Nairobi, Kenya. They lack the basic necessities of life, including adequate housing, clean water, and sanitation services. Educational opportunities are negligible. All kinds of diseases run rampant throughout the communities. The scarcity of jobs complicates every problem.

There are nine distinct slum areas in Nairobi. Kibera, the largest, covers a square mile with an estimated population of one million people. The Kangemi slum has a population of about 650,000 poor people. Nearly a million more people live in the Mathare slum, an area of less than a square mile. Rivers of sewage run through the slum towns, carrying garbage and human waste. Most families crowd as many as 10 people into one-room huts made of scrap wood, corrugated tin, or mud without electricity, running water, or toilets.

Thousands of children have no homes but the streets, and turn to begging, stealing, prostitution, and drug-dealing to survive. Why is this happening? The explosion in the number of the poor children on the streets of Nairobi and other Kenyan cities can be traced to urbanization, the breakdown of the extended family support systems, ethnic tension between tribes, lack of social services and affordable education, skyrocketing unemployment, droughts.

In this dark wilderness, Hope Partnership works to bring physical, emotional, and spiritual light through education and training to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness.