Supporters, partners, volunteers, community members and ActionAid International Kenya staff convened for the annual Friends of ActionAid event on Thursday, September 14, 2023, in Nairobi. Themed ‘A Future Together,’ the event provided a platform for participants to interact, reconnect, and share ideas to bolster AAIK’s efforts to eradicate poverty and injustice.
The event also provided an opportunity to highlight fundraising needs and opportunities as the organization embarks on to its second half of a century in Kenya. The Friends of ActionAid were motivated to continue supporting ActionAid’s work.
Members of communities where AAIK is or has been implementing projects shared testimonies of milestones on economic empowerment, capacity building, social auditing, and their contribution to climate change solutions. Charity Furaha, an Education for Life project beneficiary, told of her predicaments and how the Education for Life project turned her life around. She can now fully provide for her child, and in addition, she has employed three youths in her bakery.
“ActionAid turned my life around for the better. I dropped out of school at a tender age due to pregnancy. I did menial jobs that were hard to come by to support my family, but it was not sufficient. The literacy classes, entrepreneurial skills and scholarship to a vocational training center were all I needed to have a new lease on life. I am thankful to ActionAid and its supporters,” said Furaha.
Diana Gichengo, National Coordinator at The Institute for Social Accountability (TISA), the guest speaker, highlighted ActionAid International Kenya’s work around youth and governance, women’s rights and economic empowerment and their role in addressing climate change.
“ActionAid International Kenya has been a champion of economic empowerment of women. Through Village Savings and Loans Association, we want you and the women you work with to firmly forge forward and establish a pioneer women’s bank championing climate funding.
“As you continue to work with people living in poverty and exclusion to challenge poverty and injustice, you should strongly move into building digital entrepreneurship amongst the youth,” suggested Gichengo.
Dr. John Chumo, the chief executive officer of Mama Doing Good and a former sponsored child from primary through to high school between 1984 and 1993, graced the occasion, too. Represented at the event were government departments, foreign envoys, national and international non-governmental organizations, our local and institutional partners, communities we work with, individual friends of ActionAid and AAIK’s General Assembly, board members and staff.
As the curtains came down on the event, conversations of new alliances with peer organizations commenced, as more individuals committed to A Future Together with AAIK’s work as supporters and volunteers in different areas.
Author: Mary Consolata Makokha, Communications Officer ActionAid Kenya. Edited by Ezra Kiriago ,Communications Coordinator ActionAid Kenya.