Lwala Community Alliance

Monday, May 30th
Kisii

We had an all day site visit to Lwala Community Alliance. Of course our bus was not able to go all the way so we ended up walking there for about 20 minutes. When we arrived we were greeted by Kelly Baird who was the education and volunteer coordinator as well as Robert Kasambala, the Program Director. Kelly gave us the historical background of Fred and Milton who the community raised funds to send to school who later studied in the U.S at the same school pursuing a medical degree. They raised money to build a clinic back in their community. She describe the program with such zest and passion. I appreciated and loved the concept of Lwala which is an holistic approach to enriching the community. She explained that they focused on the strengths and used that for the initiatives that they had. Theses initiatives focused on creating uniforms for girls, reusable sanitary napkins, water sanitation, and washing hands. All of these programs are ran by the people of the community. This increases key players buy-in and many more people support it. We ate lunch and spoke to the women who were in the sewing club. We split up in groups and got a tour of the facility. The facility was impressive and the technology used was alot better than we had seen anywhere else in Kenya.

Kelly then took us on a tour of the community we met Fred and Multon's uncle. We walked to aspiring and even further to bridge that was shaky and missing woods that sometimes boda boda crossed with patients. Also, she showed us an unfinished bridge that was so much better but someone had ran off with the money before completing it.

We walked back to the school and saw the teacher's home. We helped to paint blackboards in several of the classrooms. I felt happy that we went somewhere and did the litttle that we could. We walked back said our laters and went to the bus. We all wanted to stop and get soapstone souvenirs as that is what Kisii is famous for. I got tons of pieces.

Later we met up with the group again from Lwala for a buffet style dinner. We also met Hellen's mom who was the sweetest. She is going back to secondary school. What an inspiration!