By Hemed Jumaa – Operations Manager

As an institution, we were able to accomplish quite a good number of our 2021 plans. The government revisited the suspension of registration of CCIs and after a lot of hard work; we eventually managed to submit our registration application to the national office in Nairobi. We believe in 2022 we are going to be one of the very few institutions that have a valid registration certificate.

In 2021 we had four children who joined different high schools and are now progressing well. We have ten children who are now in high school. We hope to continue with this great work of offering the best care to our children throughout 2022 by ensuring that we adequately meet all their needs. We are going to have two streams of Class 8 candidates that will be sitting for their KCPE exams and we hope that they will be able to proceed to high school without any major challenges.

Our teachers at SBM have always done their best to ensure our children get quality education and this is going to be the same target in 2022. We also continued to work closely with other organizations such as Catholic Relief Services and Kesho Kesho to ensure compliance with the new care reforms. We ensured that all the children reunited with their families continued to get all their basic needs and tried our best to trace the families of the children who are still under residential care. It is our hope that in 2022, we shall be able to reunite more children with their families as we support them to adjust to their new life.

In the farm, production continued to be fine throughout the year as we managed to get fresh vegetables, fruits and milk for our children and staffs. The number of cattle also increased as four cows calved. However, we had one major challenge in the side of broilers especially with the supply of chicks. We faced this challenge routinely and it is our prayer that in 2022 we shall get a lasting solution to it. It is our hope that the team we have at the farm will continue to work together and keep up the good work they are doing come 2022. We already came up with plans of addressing some of the challenges witnessed and the main objective of the year 2022 is to improve the overall productivity of the farm in all the three sections. We hope the weather will favor us although we already made some proactive strategies to curb its adverse effects, just in case we experience longer dry periods.

The other department that has been very crucial is the Occupational Therapy and Respite Care Department. In 2021 major development of this department took place as we managed to get most of the essential occupational therapy tools and equipment, thanks to the generous donation of our supporters. The number of clients also increased to sixty-six (66) and we added another occupational therapist, Brenda Moraa who works with Endricah Musiomi and Margret.

We are grateful we had twelve successful stories and it is our hope that these stories will increase to twenty (20) in 2022. We aspire to continue expanding this department in order to benefit more clients as our target is to close 2022 with one hundred (100) clients. We know this goal is going to be realised only when we reach out to and create awareness in the remote areas of Kilifi County where stigma and discrimination towards children with disability is still high. We also aspire to increase the number of beneficiaries of the respite care services by doubling the number that we currently have. We know with the right support and commitment all our goals will be reached.

Our Sewing and Vocational Training Department is going from strength to strength, the tailors managed to make school uniforms for all our SBM pupils and did other tasks. They made 751 reusable sanitary pads kits that benefited vulnerable and needy girls coming from humble backgrounds. We also collaborated with other organizations such as Haki yetu who work tirelessly to make sure no girl misses school due to lack of sanitary towels. On the vocational training section, there were quite a number of challenges faced as some of the trainees gave up on the way when we closed the college due to covid-19 but we thank God five trainees persevered and eventually sat for their final exams this month. In 2022, we aspire to collaborate with many other organizations to reach out to more girls in school who due to poverty cannot afford to buy sanitary pads.

The other key aspect I would wish to mention is about volunteerism. Covid-19 has seriously affected this area. Throughout 2021, we did not get any foreign volunteer. However, we are grateful that we received three local volunteers who were of great help in undertaking our day-to-day operations. Even though there are still a lot of uncertainties, who hope that come 2022 we would be able to get more volunteers whether locally or foreign as long as they comply with the covid-19 prevention protocols.

Finally yet importantly, I want to take this opportunity to appreciate all the individuals, institutions and organizations that offered any kind of help to enable us achieve our 2021 plans. We would not have made it on our own without your support. We are truly grateful and humbled by your generosity, may God guide and help you achieve all your 2022 plans.

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