The rising cost of living, in Kenya, affects not only hunger, decreasing the need for meals and the meals themselves of the population (in many cases, even working people have to decide between lunch and dinner), but also dramatically affects families and their difficulty in raising children and managing them from the moment of birth. More and more cases of young mothers abandoning their children are being reported on the coast, and often they do so not because of rejection of the little one, because of age or hiding secret relationships, but because of an inability to raise them decently.

This is why abandonments in front of health facilities or childcare centers are on the rise and, another terrible thing, illnesses and deaths from infections given by the lack of simple but essential tools and products such as diapers, disinfectants, a basin for bathing and a towel to swaddle them.
The Italian NGO Karibuni, always attentive to the problems of the poor people of the Kenyan coast, decided to intervene, creating a kit for new mothers, composed of the very items mentioned a moment ago.

Thanks to synergies between its local teams and the various departments that include health, education and the world of work, as well as agriculture and livestock, Karibuni has prepared the first 600 kits that it has begun to distribute in these days in Baolala, inland from Malindi, where about 100 young women give birth every month. For six months, then, the dispensary in the remote village will help new mothers.

"We are for programming, and in almost 20 years of presence in the area, we have completed projects in all the fields in which we have intervened," explains Karibuni President Gianfranco Ranieri, "but sometimes emergencies need to be met with extemporaneous aid, as was the case, for example, in the recent food emergency, with donations of meals for children. Now we have been thinking about the serious problem of expectant mothers, and we hope with the donations we will soon be able to give each girl in need the bare minimum needed to care for her child in the first few months of age."

The kit was made thanks to another of the NGO's important initiatives, the Langobaya tailoring workshop, which through the production of accessories using local fabrics, teaches a trade and gives work and income to many students coming out of schools in one of the poorest inland villages.
To learn more about Karibuni's initiatives, you can visit Karibuni.org or the Karibuni Onlus facebook page. For those in Kenya, there is Karibuni's office in Malindi, at Victoria Plaza, across from the Malindi Complex.