The Street Children`s Assistance Network for Nakuru (SCANN) Foundation is appealing for well-wishers’ support to feed 450 needy families in four slums in Nakuru every day.
The Chairman to the Foundation Shahmshi Gilani says the low-income families in Rhonda, Bondeni,Kivumbini and Kaptembwa slums are struggling to find food amid the prevailing harsh economic aftershocks of COVID 19 .
Speaking during the foundation`s 250,000th Hot Kitchen in Rhonda slums last evening, Gilani noted that among those that are hard hit are school-going children who he said are increasingly dropping out of school because of lack of food at their homes.
He observed that with a considerable number of households` incomes decimated by the pandemic, the population of the urban poor is soaring at an unprecedented rate, a state of affairs that calls for urgent attention from well-meaning individuals.
For the last two years, the SCANN Foundation has been providing hot meals and bedding to over 500 hard-up households in Nakuru every evening in a bid to cushion children and the elderly from pangs of hunger.
The charity has been educating poor but bright children from these areas with a view of improving their prospects for better lives in years to come.
The Chairman says the foundation is constrained in its bid to serve 750 meals every evening as the situation among beneficiaries grows dire by day.
He says the humanitarian entity needs Ksh.10, 000 every day to feed 450 people.
Beneficiaries like Aisha Haji, a mother of six school-going children and Wilson Matasi a father of eight consider the program an oasis of hope and call for its expansion so as to reach out to hundreds of people like them who contend with hardship every day.
Haji, a hawker in downtown Nakuru, says since she cannot make enough money for school fees, clothes and rent, her daughters come to the SCANN centre every evening for a meal.
The 50 year old widow says she hardly sells homemade soap-the only trade she knows- and life is exceptionally difficult.
Matasi who lost his job as a janitor at the height of the pandemic in 2020 says he has not been able to fend for his family since.His children are soon dropping out of school due to privation. Despair and disappointment have been his constant companions.
As his only form of reassurance to his children, he brings them to the Hot Kitchen in Rhonda for a meal every evening.