Churches Rebuilding a Slum

I am a bishop with the Assemblies of God church in the slum area of Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city. A year ago I attended one of Viva’s Vision Conferences, designed to get pastors involved in mobilising their churches to serve children in their neighbourhoods. In the local language we have a word, mabadkilio, that perfectly describes what’s happened to my ministry: it’s been completely transformed since this conference.

The slum I work in has 250,000 people, two-thirds of whom are under 18. The local government doesn’t provide any services in this slum: people have to leave the city to get health care, and water has to be carried in and sold because there aren’t reliable water pipes. As a result, the poorest often can’t afford to buy water. All the schools are on the outer edge of the slum, because of the high building density in its core. Most families in the slum have four to six people, and the majority of these families are in one-room houses. My church is one of ten operating in the slum.

The first thing my church did after this conference was to join with Viva and the city-wide network in Kisumu, called Arise for Children, and get involved in that community of Christians working on behalf of vulnerable children. I can’t explain how happy I am to be part of the network. All sorts of new opportunities have arisen because of my church’s membership; our church has grown markedly; and the neighbourhood is undergoing changes that are both deep and wide…

Changing children’s lives

We held a World Weekend of Prayer event at our church for the first time this year. This opened the gates for local children to start coming to church. Now we’re seen as ‘child friendly’ and lots of people want to be involved with us who weren’t even interested before!

In all my 37 years leading a church, I have never held a party for children. But through the network I learned of Viva Christmas Parties, a great way to give children a fun day and a gift while at the same time setting them up with any kind of long-term care they might need, either through us at the church, or through some of the other network members. When we held the Christmas party we also discovered how many children in our immediate neighbourhood are hungry… and after meeting them personally and spending a day together in celebration, we couldn’t let that continue. So this year my church has started a feeding programme on Sundays for the local kids. Again, when the parents see how we’re caring for their children, they want to come to church and find out why we do what we do. I never thought so much could come from a party!

Changing parents’ lives

Many children are poor because their parents can’t find jobs or can’t access the resources they need to start their own small business. (Most of the work in this slum is informal – people sell whatever products they can, or else perform tasks for others like taking them around on a bicycle.) After the Vision Conference my wife was inspired to start some women’s groups in our church, each one with a savings scheme – now, each month, a different woman has enough money to start a small business of her own. It has been wonderful to see these women given the resources, as well as the confidence, to provide for their children, and to see the children better fed and better educated as a direct result of these women’s groups!

The network also gave us an idea to start community gardens, and the church has been able to buy land and start a nursery garden, tended by 20 of our youth. Now they’re learning to earn a living by selling seedlings to locals and even people from far-flung neighbourhoods. This is especially encouraging since youth in the area are most likely to get involved in crime and drugs as they feel the pressure to make money and support themselves and their families, but can’t find work.

Changing the neighbourhood

Churches in our slum never used to work together or even reach out into the community. But at the Vision Conference, all the pastors from the area decided to organise community clean-ups. This has become a regular event, and we’ve even made an agreement with City Council so that now they actually come through and collect the rubbish. You can believe the difference it makes in a community when stinking garbage isn’t left to rot in the streets!

I just can’t get enough of the network. I want to publicly thank them for the encouragement they’ve given me to keep serving this community and its children! Our church is becoming an important part of the network too, and it’s a blessing to be able to return the favour to them. We’re helping train child ambassadors, we hosted the local World Weekend of Prayer event, we’ve attended Viva’s Child-Friendly Church training, and we’re on the network’s steering group. We are all so proud to be part of this movement that’s growing up in Kenya, all over Africa, and around the world, and I for one cannot wait to see how many lives it will touch.

~ Bishop Simiyu, Assemblies of God Church, Kisumu

To find out more about how city-wide networks help vulnerable children, visit http://www.viva.org/City-wide/