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Kenya Reports

Report #42
April 17, 2008

After writing so many words on the political, social, and economic conditions here in Kenya, I thought I would to update you on what AGLI is doing about all this.

Through our partner, Friends for Peace and Community Development and their Friends Peace Centre-Lubao, AVP in western Kenya plans on doing at least 200 AVP workshops (mostly with youth) in the next six months. We plan on doing ten to twenty workshops in a community so that the program can make a useful impact. We will focus on Western, Nyanza, and northern Rift Valley provinces. This is a huge undertaking as it means an average of 33 AVP workshops per month--the most we had done in the past was during the AVP program with the gacaca judges in Rwanda when we did about 6 per month. Not counting this week, we have done 15. This goal presents numerous challenges.

First we need to have a sufficient number of facilitators. We have increased the AVP staff at the Friends Peace Center--Lubao from one, Getry Agizah, the AVP coordinator, to five, by adding Peter Serete, Bernard Onjala, Eunice Okwemba, and Caleb Amunya. These are the lead facilitators who can go off with two other facilitators and conduct a quality workshop. We are already in the process of developing additional lead facilitators, but we also need more regular facilitators. In some cases we have "re-found" facilitators that we had trained in the past.

We are beginning to correct one of our problems. Almost all Quakers in Kenya are of the Luhya ethnic group and of the above facilitators only Bernard Onjala is not a Luhya (he is a Luo). AVP had already trained a group of Luo facilitators in Nyanza Province from the organization that Onjala is affiliated with--ARO, which is sponsored by Norwegians. The AVP group there has just turned in enrollment forms for 360 youth, that means 18 three-day basic AVP workshops, in Bondo, and in Kisumu, the city on Lake Victoria most hard hit by the violence. Next week they will begin conducting four workshops per week.

We have no Kikuyu facilitators in western Kenya. This week we are also conducting another Training for Facilitators (T4F). We have invited three Kikuyu youth from our first training at the Turbo IDP camp together with three of the youth from the village AVP here in Lumakanda (two Luhya and one Luo) to participate. All of these youth took the advanced AVP workshop last week and we received reports indicating that all of them were very "active" (the verb used here to indicate that they will be good facilitators). Of course not everyone works out, but this will be a start. We have already started using multi-ethnic teams as much as possible, but this is an area where we need to drastic improvement. The T4F will include five students from Friends Theological College who will be graduating in June and whom we hope to use to meet the increased demand for AVP workshops among Kenyan Quakers.

It is most important that we carefully monitor the quality of the workshops. Conducting this large number of workshops with many new facilitators, we need to do our utmost to insure that the quality of the workshops does not deteriorate.

There is a group of four Australians who have built a small guest house in Shinyalu, about 10 miles from Kakamega, called Takatifu (holy) Gardens. It is affiliated with Central (Kenya) Yearly Meeting. We have made an arrangement with them to use their guest house and are now holding two AVP workshops per week there. These can be residential, meaning the participants can stay overnight and do not have to travel home and return each morning. Therefore have a new plan. We do the basic AVP workshops out in the community and then bring 4 of the most "active" participants to a residential Advanced Workshop at Takatifu Gardens. In rural areas most people are of the same ethnic group so basic workshops tend not to have an ethnic mix. Bringing together people from various areas will allow us to have multi-ethnic advanced workshops. A nice part of this arrangement is that AVP supplies the facilitators and materials, while Takatifu Gardens supplies the space, food, and when needed, lodging.

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. Getry Agizah is an amazing organizer. Moreover in a culture where everyone wants to "negotiate" (i.e., overcharge), she is adamantly frugal. We have developed a menu for the workshop meals, are in the process of costing out the menu precisely, have established a limit ($300) on expenses for each workshop, etc. We do not pay for space. If the community wants the AVP workshop, they must provide the space.

While we have received a good response for funding these workshops, additional donations are still needed. If we receive even more funds, beyond those needed for workshops currently planned, then we will be able to offer additional workshops. Donations can be made by writing a check to FPT/AGLI with a memo of "Kenya Reconciliation" and mailing it to Friends Peace Teams/AGLI, 1001 Park Avenue, St Louis, MO 63104 USA or click here to donate online. Thanks for the consideration.

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