BETHESDA

CHILDREN'S MINISTRY

Welcome to Our Rehabilitation Centre.

This is a place where we share God's love to the destitute children in the streets of Nakuru in order to reestablish their lost hope and restore their dignity.

Mission statement:

To share God's love to the destitute children in the streets of Nakuru in order to re-establish their lost hope and restore their dignity.

Vision:

To prevent or remove all street children from Nakuru town.

Main Objective:

To Rescue, Rehabilitate and reintegrate the children back to their family/relatives and the community at large.

THE STORY.

An estimated number of 160 million children are now fighting for their survival along the streets in the major towns of the world. Kenya is not an exception of this scourge. Though the government is doing their best to eliminate the problem, we still have about 150 000 children on the streets of Kenya. Nakuru alone has got more than 3000 boys and girls who need to be rescued from the streets. According to our research there is almost 50 existing homes/centers dealing with children in Nakuru, yet we still have an increasing number of children resorting to street life. We can not avoid questioning ourselves: Why? Are our programs really effective? Do we include or exclude the family? Will we reach better results if we embark on networking with other stakeholders? How is the government involved in our programs?

Several reasons make the children to end up in the streets. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has stuck Kenya more than we dare to imagine. All Kenyans are either infected or affected. Many children are left behind to a life in poverty and sometimes also without anybody to take care of them. Though many of the orphans are taken care of by relatives we also have many children that eventually end up in the streets. But HIV/AIDS is not the only reasons pushing children to the streets. We have experienced that almost of all children have somewhere they call home, where they have relatives or parents. The reason why they decide to leave that environment is very individual but we have some common reasons like poverty, whereby the child sometimes acts as a breadwinner, different kind of abuse, lack of care and support, idleness and peer pressure.

Kenya in the end of 2002 voted for a political change, we have seen some positive changes in our country. Primary education is now free and street children have been put on the government’s agenda in a way we have not experienced before. As NGOs and churches working with children we are happy for the involvement of the government, but we also expect them to take even more responsibility. We need to put all our efforts together to fight for our future generation.

In the beginning of 2003, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya, in collaboration with the Swedish Lutheran Mission, started a ministry among the children in the streets of Nakuru.

Today our program consists of five activities.

At Bethesda Children's Ministry we have:

Bethesda Complex Academy.

Bethesda children's ministry boys under rehabilitation ,have been attending public school whereby they were undergoing stigmatization hence run back to the street. This made Bethesda think of how to prevent them back to the street thus we came up with an idea of starting a preventive program which will cater for basic education.

Another issue which was born on the way, there is a neighborhood slum next to our project. While doing evangelism, we found that school aged kids are not going to school due to poverty and lack of parental care. Most of these slum kids are of single mothers and fathers. Then these kids end up going to the street of Nakuru thus making us rescue them from the street being on drugs.

From the above two points, the idea of starting A Preventive program was born in the year 2011 with the aim of feeding the kids at our center and providing them with basic education then go back to the slum and those under rehabilitation spend full time under our care. The kids from the slum are paying nothing as majority have no parents or guardian to care after them.

At moment we have over 100 kids under this program with eight teachers for grade one to six (as of 2020),that we are looking forward as per ministry of education ,make it a primary school school that will fully offer education like any other education institution but under Bethesda children ministry, because no government funds towards this noble idea. Bethesda Children's ministry caters for meals, infrastructure, staff salaries and school materials.

The requirements to manage the school is the main challenge at the moment but through faith of HEBREWS 11;1, we will make it.

Rehabilitation Center.

that provides a rehabilitation program where the children welfare is taken as the first priority in the institution, Once a child has been admitted to our rehabilitation centre we do take him for medical check-up at the Provincial general hospital.

Guest House.

Bethesda family came up with an idea of an some income generating activities in order to add something to Bethesda account. With the options we had, a guest house came to be the better option. We realized that when we receive volunteers to our project, they were staying in Nakuru town hotels which are far away from our project around 15 km, thus spend a lot of time on the way, to and fro.

We found that an idea of the guest house will help them to stay within hence spending more time with the kids around. Then the accommodation fee will be paid to the project thus will be income generating project.

Since we opened up our guest house to volunteers, we have seen its bearing fruits . Also it open up for guests who prefer to spend with kids or who are on touring the country and want to pass by Nakuru town.

Nakuru town is a tourist attraction site with Menengai crater to the north, Nakuru game park to the south, Lord Egerton castle which is our neighbor around 1 km from our project. With many more tourist attraction site on entire great Rift valley and Kenya at large, we welcome those willing to book our guest house for Bethesda children to be on safe side of getting daily necessity.

We can accommodate a number of guests prior to arrangement. One can contact us on the address below for more information.

Heartsoorters Ministry
Streets of Hope International
Mama Hellen Rehab Centre
Rohi Children's Organization
New Life Home International
Abbey Resort
Mustard Seed International Schools
Ngata Primary School
Nakuru Children Initiative (NAKCHI)

BETHESDA

CHILDREN'S MINISTRY

Welcome to Our Rehabilitation Centre.

THE STORY.

Collaborating Partners