Charity in The City #HomelessOfNairobi

When charity isn’t a PR stunt or done to alleviate a guilt trip, it’s truly a beautiful concept. Corporate giants handing out a meal once a year to homeless children, men and women has a bad tinge to it. That’s why when we came across Clifford Chianga Oluoch’s feeding program we got excited. It’s altruistic, has no financial benefit to the organizers (unless you count good karma points) and is so simple in it’s set up, it boggles the mind.

Nairobi has a growing homeless problem and it would appear that it’s one that the government is either indifferent or is powerless, to address. Yet groups such as Homeless of Nairobi by Shamit Patel (which was recently featured in the Guardian but not yet on the Daily Nation or the Standard) or the Urban Hope Project, are both projects that strive to shed light on the plight of the homeless and to help them improve their lives.

The story of how Chianga Oluoch got started is the stuff that Cannes Selection juries love. One day in Westlands, he was buying boiled maize from a street vendor when two homeless kids appeared asking the vendor if they could get some at half price. He refused so Clifford offered to pay for them. They disappeared but a few minutes later a larger group appeared asking for some and as soon as that group had left another came. He, without realizing it, had bought maize for over 20 boys.Then a conversation between him and them that has inspired and fed hundreds so far ensued

(We admit that this is heavily paraphrased)

Chianga Oluoch is a school-teacher, not a multimillionaire philanthropist. Yet he has managed to rally people around a cause that we often take for granted. Every evening after work, he sits at his dining table with volunteers and his family and spreads margarine on the bread, packs it up with milk and heads out to Westlands to feed the kids. when asked what inspired him to start the program he had this to say

 

Chianga Oluoch is eager to get more people involved in his homegrown feeding program. Currently, he says there are about 60 street kids that are getting fed by the program and it is costing him a total of 2,500 KES a day. Every evening they get buttered bread and on weekends they get ugali/rice and meat. When we asked him to tell us about some of the kids he told us about a young boy from Kakamega

So get a group of your friends together, you don’t have to be many even 15 will do, organize yourselves and reach out to Clifford at cliffordoluoch@gmail.com on how you can pick a month to sponsor. That’s not the only way you can get involved, tweet, Facebook and Instagram as much as possible using the hashtag #HomelessOfNairobi to get the word out there to even more people who can help and hopefully start similar initiatives of their own. We asked Abigail Arunga, author of Akello, why she has involved herself in the program and this is what she had to say

Here’s an awesome tip from Kibali Moreithi, you can buy goods in bulk from Mahitaji Traders on Keekorok road (+254 20 225062) who are sort of like Cost Co to help you minimize costs.

Check out this post by Magunga Williams on his experience this past week working with Clifford feeding the kids.

Photos are courtesy of Magunga Williams proprietor of The Real G inc, we apologize for their quality, they were taken in low light and with a camera phone. Besides he’s known for his writing and not photography. For even more information click on this link to read on how the initiative goes beyond feeding the kids.