REHORI ACTIVITIES
Our organization is involved in a number of activities, which all were welcomed by the majority of its beneficiaries at various service levels.
PEACE- BUILDING, CONFLICTS RESOLUTION, AND CONFLICTS PREVENTION
Peace is a key to human development and a fundamental key to the development of every sector.
Lack of peace is the most deadly tragedy a community can encounter. Not only do we hear of wars, turmoil, crisis, but we have also lived them and felt how horrible it is to live in a place where there is no peace and people suffer.
Wars, turmoil, humanitarian crises, and other threats to peace are all man-made and can be prevented by human intervention. For that REHORI and many activists are engaged in building peace where there is no peace, and in strengthening peace where peace is threatened.
Conflicts arise here and there and they are usually triggered just by a very small number of people. Because humans think differently and thus it makes it difficult to prevent conflicts in the community, professionals and volunteers must intervene early with a conflict resolution process. Though finding a solution may be hard, it is the right way to stop further deterioration of peace in any place.
Unresolved conflicts can sometimes lead to a series of revenge actions among the refugees and also the host communities who then resort to fighting with the refugees.
REHORI has been working hard in finding lasting solutions and will always be playing a pivotal role in preventing conflicts among and between different ethnicities as well as even between nations.
Conflict starts from many places in the refugee camp such water points, food distribution centers, schools, football fields.
During our first pilot project, REHORI was able to train youth and women about peace building and gender-based violence (GBV) with the support from Danish Refugee Council (DRC), Kenya.
The participating youth and women had witnessed major conflicts in the refugee camp and they were entirely the main beneficiaries of the project, thus empowering them to find their best solutions.
FAMILY RESTORATION
Nowadays personal relationships even among families are very fragile. Due to the hardship there is often a low level of love in the communities.
Life challenges and misunderstandings grieve families as well as personal relationships, which leads to such ailments as anxiety, depression, chronic illness, substance abuse-related problems, communication problems, interpersonal conflict, or parenting challenges between children and adolescents. Individual and Family counseling is very beneficial to address these issues and is therefore addressed by REHORI with priority.
REHORI is set to restore and build strong family bonds, and harmonious cohabitation; and we have been a pivot of restoring families. We help parents love each other and love their children for love is the foundation of family happiness. We reconcile the separated partners, siblings, and friends; with experts in all our centers.
EARLY MARRIAGE PREVENTION
We fight early child marriage and other harmful traditions, cultures, and practices that interfere with child education and development, we mobilize adolescents, and specifically focus on the protection of young girls.
Community workers posed for a photo after attending a training to prevent early child marriage
We train boys ad girls to stand firm against all pressures to get married or casual sex. We train communities with emphasis on equal opportunity for both boy and girl children.
Increasing access to high quality and safe schooling is our critical strategy in ending early marriage and casual sex for young girls and ensuring single mothers young girls and married young girls have the opportunity to complete at least secondary education and /or join vocational training to equilibrate their lives and the society.
We help teenage asylum seekers and refugees to cope with the new environment that they find themselves in after being forced to leave their home countries and embrace school as the way to build up their future.
We reinforce governmental laws in the community that girls and boys of school age are still children despite the advancement formation of their bodies. Keeping girls in school is an effective way to prevent girls from marrying but it is not enough, communities have to be trained to abolish harmful traditions, cultures, practices, and ill beliefs that handicap development. The worst belief is that once adolescent girls get married their families will get wealth, dowry, and another advantage from the son or family-in-law, and/or engagement into casual sex keep adolescent girls independent from their families that they will not need anything from parents such belief is a danger that has to be prevented for the betterment of the society. REHORI is committed to working on this.
PARENTING TRAINING
Whether one is the parent of a toddler or a teenager, it’s so natural that parenting can be challenging–even overwhelming at times. Unfortunately, children don’t come with an instruction manual. And, being a parent doesn’t always mean that one automatically knows what to do. Rearing children needs professional guidance.
We train parents, married and non-married, teenage parents, come-we-stay couples, and future parents to:
- Actively communicate; to hear their child’s feelings, especially when they need their help.
- Recognize conflict situations; modify the environment to prevent problems and conflicts.
- Determine what to do when a children’s behavior is interfering with the parent’s meeting their needs.
- Confront their child’s unacceptable behavior. Handle values collisions.
- Helping parents to be able to relate well with each other and with their children in a way children will feel loved and free to discuss their problems and concerns with parents especially teenagers.
- Experience fewer anger outbursts and more problem-solving. Learn how to work with each other instead of against each other, instead of withdrawing from their parental responsibilities.
- Accept and love each other for the betterment of family and society, discouraging divorces and separations.
- Live, practice, and respect children's rights and prepare children to become responsible adults and good citizens.
FORMAL EDUCATION
The high need for Early Child Education and Development of refugee children in Kakuma is increasing, thus REHORI, is concerned with filling the gap and fixing the issue by providing child-friendly learning facilities built with non-durable materials where hundreds of children get fundamental education. Children find REHORI centers to be a better place for their intellectual growth with ethics and love as they enjoy sharing the little food they get from REHORI; many children don’t feel to leave REHORI premises to go to their homes because of the high enjoyment they get - concern for Yom Deng.
The REHORI center is a learning place where many children, whose parents are unable to have them in either private or public schools due to financial exigencies. Reflecting the lowest-income situation of the parents, the children are given free quality education without any condition or exigency. Despite the old looks of the iron sheets of some centers, children love so much the centers because of their lovely and child-friendly environments. The Early Child Development & Education personnel of the centers provide also vital knowledge to the growth of children.
REHORI centers prepare children to be good and honest members of the community.
Pupils are getting a lesson in Chess during lunch break
We have been running class 1 of primary schools and giving advanced learning classes of grown-up children of 11– 16 years who could be in school but they no longer want to be in school as they feel ashamed, denigrated and humiliated by getting mixed with younger children in one level and classroom. Our volunteers are highly trained and passionately deliver modern education.
We opened a child-friendly education center that would only accommodate 100 children, but to our astonishment 250 children were brought by all those impoverished parents who cannot afford to maintain their children in either private or public schools.
The first center in Kakuma has children from all backgrounds but most of them are from vulnerable Kenyan families as well as refugees and asylum seekers (South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, D. R. Congo, Sudan and Somalia) who find themselves in a foreign land with nothing in their possession. Much effort is put to ensure children are happily educated.
Apart from the aforementioned activities, REHORI runs remedial classes from the regular schools to help the slow learners and those students who used a different curriculum back in their countries of origin. The program is normally taking place in the afternoons on weekdays and on weekends.
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION & SKILLS TRAINING
We provide technical skills that will enable both the refugee community and the host community to integrate into the market economy - mainly in the business of Electronics repair, Computer literacy, Tailoring & Fashion design, Welding & Metal-works, Masonry, Arts, and Permaculture.
80% of our trainees in technical skills are sent to local partners’ workshops for practical training, but training of computer application, cosmetology and permaculture we are doing it in our premises.
Reskilling refugees
Women play an important role in day to day survival of all societies, and they need some empowerment to help them do better, diligently, and satisfactorily in their multi-tasked life.
REHORI is devoted to giving them a helping hand and some vital skills (financial management, entrepreneurship, investments) so that they can start something that will help them innovate their families and society. Many refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants as well as hosts go through a hard time to fix gaps in life and live the life they want.5
Youths are also engaged to participate in a number of games and sports such footballs, volley ball, chess and basketball where they develop some exceptional skills like getting a sponsor in the future.
Adult literacy programs
Man-made disasters (wars, civil strife, poverty, environmental destruction) cause many children to not attend even elementary school. The assessment of the year 2016 shows that Kenya and Tanzania have the highest rate of illiteracy of both males and female refugees, and in particular Tanzanian host community has a low number of literates; thus REHORI established adult education/literacy & numeracy centers to upgrade the lifestyle of people of concern. Literacy/alphabetization classes for refugees and autochthons are run by highly qualified teachers committed to uplifting the knowledge of illiterates that they can be able to read, write and count so that they can easily adapt to the rhythm of this world that is evolving fast. Many of them are taught Basic English, French and Swahili to help them market their goods and service without any constraints.
Charitable works initiated by REHORI
Our organization also carried out some charity work within the refugee and the host communities. We offered our services in places like hospitals by giving the patients milk, foods and clothes when they are hospitalized. We also donate second hands clothes to an unaccompanied children who cannot help themselves. This is indeed our objectives to help the people whose lives have been affected by wars. n
Environment conservation
In a worst environmental condition communities become not conducive and dangerous for humans, many lives suffer a lot from that. The project aims at making communities clean, healthy and attractive by conducting cleaning up campaigns. The most hazardous waste (plastics, glasses, organic, textiles, polythene) are collected in one place for recycling. To establish a recycling hub after collecting a bulk of tons of plastics to sustain the project and empower refugee community and host community economically, as well as building first circular economy move in Turkana
People collecting the waste materials for recycling. They are also conserving the environment
REHORI is a leading campaigner for environmental conservation, the organization works in solidarity with scientists to fight the challenges of climate change.
Collected plastic waste ready for recycling
We collect and recycle plastics bottles, sheets, and metallic materials. Money from the recycling is used for our tree nurseries, where we also grow medicinal plants like Artemisia annua. The trees are then planted out to combat two main issues: climate change and food security, since the trees are important parts of our and climate change.
Games and Sport
REHORI greatly supports the sport activities in the refugee camp.
Refugee youth competing during a friendly match
Our organization is working very hard to make sure that the students benefit from their talents and also engage in these physical activities and stay productive - so that they cannot indulge themselves in crime.
Kakuma has produced a good number of world-class athletes, who were even participating in the Olympics, and many top foot- and basketball champions.
Among them:
James Nyang Chiengjiek, a former refugee from South Sudan, 400m, 800m
Dorian Keletela, a former Congolese refugee, 60m, 100m
Paulo Amotun Lokoro, a former South Sudanese refugee, 1500m
