Saturday, March 22, 2008

The Carewell Trust

AVIF have just been contacted by the Carewell Society's founder member & Executive Director, Kennedy M. Okong'o.



Ken is a lawyer and a former athlete who has been coordinating fundraising & awareness raising events such as marathons for the last 4 years in Kenya.



Photos of the marathon are here but before I give you a link I want to warn you of the graphic nature of the websites photo gallery. The marathon photos are very informative but there are extremely upsetting images in the 3rd gallery of the recent violence.

Sat here in the UK it is easy for even myself to forget about what has gone on in Kenya since December 27th 2007. The hype and the news coverage has diminished, simply because human nature demands we celebrate the signing of the coalition government and the beginning of a return to peace. What this unfortunately does, however, and simultaneously, is to block out the realities that still exist now. I believe the Carewell Trust has included these images simply because they have to deal with this on a regular basis whereas a lot of us are extremely lucky not to have to. They don't mean to upset anyone, just to educate us.

As the Carewell website tells "there are still 250,000 internally displaced people, including children, located in 300 sites in Western, Nyanza, Rift Valley and Nairobi Provinces of Kenya, alone. These people are in dire need of human, health and security services." Carewell are able to help with many things including trauma counselling. We hope to help too.

I wrote above that the images are extremely upsetting. In perspective I feel a bit ridiculous thinking of what the people looking through the bars into the church would write, or what the child on the bed would sob.


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