Like most organisations working in family based care, we frequently highlight the harms of children’s institutions such as orphanages and why it’s important to transition to family-based care and bring children home. However, seldom do we address the issue of the caregivers who work in institutions, many of whom work in poor conditions for low …
Continue reading “The unheard voices of caregivers in orphanages”
By Michelle Oliel of Stahili and Sophie Otiende of HAART. One of Kenya’s leading newspapers, the Daily Nation, recently reported a story of a Dutch national with previous convictions for sex offences who has been charged with sexually abusing and assaulting young girls in a Kenyan orphanage which he had himself established. As outrageous as …
Continue reading “Let’s Call it What it is: Orphanage Trafficking”
2018 was another positive year for our team at Stahili as we continued our work to ensure that children grow up in families, not orphanages. As always, we were inspired every day by careleavers, fellow advocates, friends and supporters around the world. Building on developments in 2017, 2018 was a momentous year of action. …
Continue reading “Stahili’s review of 2018: a year of action for families, not orphanages”
Concern about the harmful effects of orphanage volunteering and “orphanage tourism” has grown around the world in recent years, for example in Australia. Now Wybren van Haga, Spokesperson for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie), a leading Dutch political party, has put forward proposals to curb and eventually end orphanage …
Continue reading “Stahili welcomes the VVD initiative to end orphanage tourism in the Netherlands”
Claire Bennett is one of the co-authors of the new book Learning Service: the Essential Guide to Volunteering Abroad with Zahara Heckscher, Joseph Collins, and Daniela Papi-Thornton. Stahili’s Education and Advocacy Director, Rob Oliver, recently spoke to Claire, who is based in Nepal, about the concept of “learning service” and how it offers us new …
Continue reading “From service learning to learning service: an interview with Claire Bennett”
The idea of combining volunteer work with tourism sounds, at first glance, like a “win-win” situation. You travel, you do good. Volunteer + tourism. What could possibly go wrong? In partnership with teachers at the International School of The Hague (ISH), Stahili has piloted a two-week programme, the Voluntourism Project, for year 11 students (aged …
Giulia Mazzu is a third year Law student at King’s College, London, and a summer research fellow at Stahili Foundation. The combination of volunteering and tourism has grown in popularity among teenagers and university students, especially those who can afford to pay to participate in volunteering trips abroad. I attended a private high school, where …
Continue reading “The business of overseas volunteering: a student perspective”
All children deserve and have the right to grow up in loving and secure families. Unfortunately, many children in Kenya continue to live in Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs), sometimes called orphanages or children’s homes. While the first priority is for children living in institutions to be reunified with and cared for by their parents, children …
Continue reading “Why we are building community-based foster care in Kenya”
Stahili’s team in Kenya works closely with the Senior Assistant Chief of the Makuyu sub-location, Esther Wangechi Muchemi. Assistant Chief Muchemi partnered with Stahili to take the pledge to create an orphanage-free community in her sub-county and to establish family-based alternatives to the residential care of children. In this post, Assistant Chief Muchemi shares why …
Stahili volunteer and advocate Catherine Cottam recently shared her story about volunteering in and donating to an orphanage in Kenya. In this second post, Catherine reflects on the alternatives to voluntourism and what it means to redirect support from orphanages to families. As a former so-called “orphanage voluntourist”, the first step for me was to …
Continue reading “What Redirecting Support from Orphanages to Families Means to Me”