SOS Family Strengthening Program in Eldoret, Kenya
A new partnership in support of the SOS Children’s Villages Family Strengthening Program in Eldoret, Kenya between Xellia Pharmaceuticals and SOS Children’s Villages Denmark, commenced at the start of 2018. From 2018-2020, Xellia Pharmaceuticals will continue to provide financial support in Eldoret, Kenya.
The new three year partnership will be dedicated to funding the operations of the Family Strengthening Program through the SOS Social Center in Eldoret. The focus of the Family Strengthening Program will be on healthcare and education. The SOS Social center at SOS Children’s Villages in Eldoret, provides Family Strengthening Programs to the local community, which aim to alleviate hardships, so that family stability can be upheld and children will not be abandoned or need to be placed in alternative care.
About the program
The Family Strengthening Program is a holistic program, which works around the child to ensure its best care – while working with the parents to ensure that they are capable of providing proper care to their children. The local Family Strengthening Program team in Eldoret carefully assesses the needs of each family and child to identify the best way to offer support. Key elements will typically include access to essential healthcare, education and other services, counseling and psychological support.
However, many of the families are very poor and they are assisted with urgent material needs such as iron sheeting for roofs, mattresses, blankets, mosquito nets, cooking pots and school uniforms that will allow children to access elementary school for free. The most vulnerable families receive supplementary food rations of maize, beans, cooking oil, sugar and porridge. In addition, SOS Children’s Villages Medical Center offers free medical advice, treatment and medicine to the families in the program.
Over the three years...
Xellia Pharmaceuticals and SOS Children’s Villages in Denmark have joined forces once again, building on its existing work together – Xellia’s full funding support to the SOS Medical Center 2015-2017, and the renovation of the Maternity Wing in Eldoret Kenya, 2017/2018. With this new partnership, Xellia will continue to provide funding to the community in need, ensuring that more than 70 vulnerable and poor families in the local communities – and approximately 250 children – will be strengthened during the three-year period from 2018 - 2020.
Families exit the program when they have achieved a decent improvement in their livelihood conditions. A household monitoring tool is used to assess the level of family health, psychosocial, economic and general welfare in order to consent on the exit.
The families enrolled in the SOS Family Strengthening Program are selected in cooperation with local social authorities, including schools, based on clear criteria. The target group are the most vulnerable families, namely those where the head of the family is the oldest child, old grandparents or parents that are terminally ill with HIV/AIDS. Often these families are so poor and face so many social problems that they cannot satisfy their children’s most fundamental needs for food, clothing, a place to live, medical treatment, school, care and love.