Tushinde Children’s Trust

About us

The Tushinde Children´s Trust, founded in 2010, is a charity working in Nairobi’s Mathare and Kiambiu informal settlements with over 350 vulnerable children.

With our unique Case Management System, Tushinde provides social protection, free education, and sometimes housing to children from extremely poor families.

Programs and projects
Scholarship Programme: 100 children enrolled in 15 community-based schools
• Tushinde, MathareTushinde pays for each child’s annual tuition fees, including exams costs.
• We support our partner schools by providing professional development workshops, and small grants every year for the purchase of textbooks, supplies or the refurbishment of classrooms.
• Our social workers regularly visit schools to follow up on the attendance and smooth integration of the students.
Family Support Programme: We help 70 families (with a total of 391 family members, 269 being under 18 years)
• Our social workers work closely with every family to offer holistic, tailored care and support.
• For all families we give a ‘family allowance’ to cover basic needs such as food, rent and clothing to our enrolled families.
• Some families may require more in times of crisis and with these families we can go further with the provision of food parcels, rent payments and meet other, urgent needs.
• Tushinde provides access to medical care through referrals and financial support when needed.
• We provide counselling, training and awareness-raising activities though case management and regular family visits.
• As a new initiative, we now work with families to help them become more financially independent. This could be through business or vocational training and small grants to start income generation activities.
Day Care Centre: 35-40 infants and toddlers
• Tushinde has partnered with a local women’s group to operate a safe day care centre that provides nutrition in the form of a lunch programme and play activities and is open 12 hours a day, 6 days a week to enable mothers of very young children to work and provide for their families.
• The project initiative came from the recognition that many poor mothers in this area need to leave their infants or toddlers in care so they can find work, usually casual day jobs, and that existing services available in the community are inadequate and of a very low standard.
• This places the children at high risk of malnutrition and neglect. In extreme cases, but quite common in the area, mothers who have no alternative would leave their infant or toddler locked in the house alone for the entire day.
• This can lead to devastating consequences for the children: sickness, injury and dehydration in the short term and malnutrition and severely delayed development in the long term.
• Our day care centre has trained workers who care and play with babies from six months to three years and provides a safe environment for the very young to explore the world.

Megan Wright is the Founder & Director of the Tushinde Children´s Trust UK.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.