Mully Children's Family Project
- UPDATE: April 2012 "Easter Newsletter"
- Kenya - The Country
- The Yatta Street Girls Rehabilitation Project
- Charles Mully: His Inspirational Story
- Watch the Yatta Video
- Gifts-in-Kind
UPDATE: April 2012 "Easter Newsletter"
Dear Friends,
As we think about Easter this year at MCF, many think about hav-ing time off from school, work, and celebrating with family. Some will reflect on the resurrection power, and some friends may not even realize the significance of the season that we are in… What difference does Easter make anyway?
It makes a lot of difference to those who are in touch enough with reality to take life and death seriously. It made a lot of difference to a very real woman named Mary. Let us remember her story. Mary had the heart-wrenching honor of washing the dried blood from Jesus' lifeless body as two other followers prepared the tomb cut into Jerusalem's walls. Mary wept as she washed--wept and remembered...
She had seen her Lord die an excruciating death, his body weight hanging limp from the nails driven through his hands and feet, suspended from a cross like a common criminal.
[Read more...
]Kenya - The Country
Kenya ranks low on the Human Development index. The proportion of the population living in poverty has risen so significantly in the last 10 years that an additional 2.7 million people are living below the poverty line in the 21st century than they were in the late 1990s. The impact of extreme poverty combined with the effects of the HIV/AIDS has fostered an increase in orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), who are often left to find their own means of survival. More than 1.3 million OVC inhabit Kenya, and within that figure an estimated 250,000 are street children. Thus, the problem of street children in Kenya has reached an alarming state, with thousands of children to be found in most every town and rural village, and very few of them receive any means of support.
Women and girls constitute the majority of poor people in Kenya. Traditions and social norms that favour male dominance marginalize women and children in Kenyan society, and cause them to lack in education, vocational skills, credit access, and market share. The majority of young girls are forced to drop out of school at a young age and succumb to early marriages, or turn to the streets for survival. Girls on the streets live with the constant threat of rape, physical abuse, and forced prostitution. Life on the streets exposes them to all sorts of health problems, such as STD’s, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and skin diseases, malnutrition, rape, and even death. They lack life’s basic needs such as food, clothing, medical care, shelter and education.
The Yatta Street Girls Rehabilitation Project
The Yatta Street Girls Rehabilitation Project has been developed by a local Kenyan organization called the Mully’s Children Family (MCF). In 2002, Crossroads partnered with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to provide support for the development of the Yatta Street Girls Rehabilitation program. The program seeks to rescue and rehabilitate street girls through the provision of basic human needs, psychosocial support, education and training. The program goal is to see street girls successfully reintegrated back into society as productive, responsible citizens.
The Yatta program provides shelter, a nutritious diet, medical care, clothes, counseling and care to close to 200 girls that have been rescued from desperate circumstances. Through meeting basic human needs, human dignity and health is restored to the girls. The girls receive basic education and are equipped with vocational skills.
When the girls come into the centre they are assessed on their learning capacity. Most of the girls will enter a regular school curriculum that is taught at classrooms on site. Girls who are unable to progress through the formal education system (due to the effects of drugs, or other hazardous affects of life on the streets) are equipped with income-generating vocational skills.
All girls are provided access to both traditional and non-traditional vocational skills, such as: hairdressing, tailoring, carpentry, metalwork, and microfinance. Equipping girls with knowledge in both traditional and non-traditional trades positions women at a better advantage than previously experienced. Girls who have been trained in non-traditional trades, such as woodworking and welding have seen great success due to their diligence in skill, as well as simply gaining access to new sectors of the market. Training in livestock care, agricultural development, and entrepreneurial practices not only increases household security (important for female-headed households), but also equips the girls to effectively contribute to the larger sector of agriculture. Agriculture is the largest economic sector in Kenya, with the majority of the labour force consisting of women.
Charles Mully: His Inspirational Story
Abandoned at six years of age, hard work and entrepreneurship took Charles Mully from poverty to wealth. In 1989 Charles and Esther Mully founded the Mully’s Children Family (MCF). They channeled all their personal wealth and resources into rescuing and rehabilitating street children who come from the most dire of circumstances. Over 1,600 children have found a new life through the care and commitment of the Mully family.
All proceeds from the purchase of Charles Mully’s biography, Father to the Fatherless, go to support the work of the Mully’s Children Family (MCF).
Canadian supporters can order ‘Father to the Fatherless’ on www.amazon.ca.
American supporters can order through www.amazon.com.
Watch the Yatta Video
Gifts-in-Kind
We send shipments of containers to Kenya as another means of meeting the many needs of a project in a developing country. If you would like to donate new and/or “hardly used” agricultural/livestock equipment, tools, linens, cribs, (etc.)…please call Wilson at our warehouse: 519-754-4049 or email: missionwarehouse@crossroads.caThank you for your support.
HE DID IT!
