Children living with or affected by HIV often experience stigma, discrimination and social exclusion or have experienced trauma directly linked to their HIV status, including SGBV or loss of a parent to AIDS. Stigma can cause caregivers not to reveal the status to the children, undermining their ability to manage their condition, while others are isolated or withdraw from social spaces due to self-stigma. Their self-esteem is affected and they suffer from emotional pain. Most lack the skills to freely talk about how they are feeling, or even know how to manage pain and this in turn affects their physical health. Most families living in the slums lack resources for counseling, and many are not empowered to provide psycho-social support to their children.
TICAH’s SHINE program aims to improve health, social well-being and development of vulnerable children living with or affected by HIV through enhancing their agency to manage their condition and increased psychosocial support. This group-oriented programme seeks to enhance psycho-social support and equip children with life skills through fun, age-appropriate holistic health interventions, including use of art, that will enable them to cope with trauma. Specifically, the program aims to achieve:
So far, we have reached over 200 children with SHINE and trained over 50 facilitators. Help us reach 800 children in 2024 by donating to our “20 Days of Giving” campaign here or on MPESA (Paybill: 994347; Account Number: Giving Tuesday).
We work to end malnutrition and enhance holistic health among children in ECD centres. Through our integrated approach, we conduct nutritional talks among children, teachers and caregivers, and support ECD centers to set up a demonstration garden that double as a source of vegetables for the children as well as a learning space for the children. We partner with school health programs and the County Nutritional and Wellness Department to support active case findings in schools and referrals to facilities where needed.
As a justice-oriented organization, TICAH also works with vulnerable children to ensure they can enjoy their right to health and well-being. Our focus is on supporting children to enhance their agency and claim their rights, which includes the right to health, protection, self-express and access to age-appropriate information. We use body mapping as a tool for healing for children, PLHIV and victims of abuse, with an overall improvement of well-being being reported among targeted groups. We also strengthened multi-stakeholder coordination in child protection by creating spaces for round table dialogues for streamlining of GBV and child protection services.
To date, our child protection activities have reached over 4,500 children in schools, using art as a tool to share information on rights and values, and promote healing for victims of abuse. 48 teachers and young facilitators have also been trained on children rights and child protection and are facilitating dialogues and implementing child protection measures in schools. Young artists have been linked with students to create murals that raise awareness on children rights and give children a voice. An average of 76-84% increase in agency has been reported among children particularly in their self-esteem, confidence, leadership and collective action.
Adolescence is a phase of life between adulthood and childhood. It is an ongoing physical, emotional and social change and the time when many young people start to explore their sexuality and develop intimate relationships with others. It can also be a time of risk taking and peer pressure. Attitudes and values related to gender equality and sexuality are healthy behaviors that are established in this period and have implications on their health and social being later in life. Therefore, adolescent is a critical time to develop healthy behaviors in relation to sexual and reproductive health, yet most of the adolescents lack the knowledge and skills required to make informed decisions leaving the vulnerable to coercion, HIV/AIDs and STI infections and teenage pregnancies. Teenage pregnancy and motherhood rate in Kenya stands at 15%.
TICAH creates safe spaces both in and out of school settings reaching out to vulnerable girls and young women in their diversities. The in-school sessions are implemented through the school health clubs within informal settings and the out of school sessions reaches out to adolescent mothers aged 15-19 years within the informal settlements. TICAH employs a human rights-based approach and a learner –centered approach in that the topics covered are age appropriate and adapted to the age and developmental stage of the people. The aim of the sessions is to empower and create agency among young people, provide them with knowledge and life skills that are essential to enable them make informed, voluntary and healthy choices. The topics covered during the sexuality group sessions include welcome to puberty, gender, power and rights, GBV, relationship and sexuality, teenage pregnancies, HIV&AIDs and goal-setting. To date, TICAH has trained a total of 30 CSE facilitators as trainers of trainers who have in turn reached 434 young people with CSE information in 2023 alone.