Shelter Children’s Rehabilitation Centre

Shelter Re-integration Project

As Kenya prepares to implement a new re-integration requirement that forces recovering orphaned and vulnerable youth from orphanages in January 2010, the world prepares to add to its statistics the high probability of these youths’ emotional strife, homelessness, isolation, failure. Studies in East Africa indicate that the region’s orphaned young adults are disproportionately vulnerable to extreme poverty, prostitution, criminal activity, depression and suicide, and suggest that, without access to formal re-integration services, many of Kenya’s orphaned youth must brace themselves for continued trauma in the new year.

Shelter Children’s Rehabilitation Centre has prepared for its youth a comprehensive re-integration program to meet both the urgent needs for those who are to exit the orphanage immediately and the long-term needs for those children who have more time to prepare for independence at eighteen.

Immediate intervention includes:

the procurement of short-term internships with local businesses
low-interest business start-up loans and business training
housing and counseling with extended family when appropriate
a half-way home for orphaned children without extended family
funding for secondary school/college/vocational training tuition to ensure uninterrupted education
the provision of independent life skills training that will continue as long as necessary after departure from the orphanage
consistent communication with social work staff

Efforts to address long-term needs include:

regular vocational training
computer-skills training
independence counseling over several years
an initiative to bring older women from the community to help children to overcome trauma
additional staff (social workers and care givers)

This multi-faceted program is meant to not only provide urgent relief to those youth who must leave the orphanage immediately, but it is meant to increase independence skills and bolster emotional stability over time for the remaining youth and children to help smooth the transition to independence in the future. The program is to be implemented in partnership with several local and international NGOs, and it emphasizes community involvement to build connections that may quell isolation and encourage community identity. The measures are expected to directly affect more than 200 children and sixteen host families within the first year, will lay the groundwork to serve dozens more individuals in the rural Kibiko community in computer literacy, and may serve as a pilot program to help other orphanages throughout Kenya in the future.

Your donations are needed now more than ever. As the youth at Shelter grow and leave the children’s home, the staff at Shelter hopes that through their proposed re-integration program they are able to maintain their role as a supportive, accessible family beyond the confines of the orphanage walls – and that Shelter’s youth can know that they are not to be abandoned again.

To learn more about Shelter, please visit Shelter's website or e-mail Susan Rosas at

Donate today, and empower orphaned and vulnerable youth to become the independent, successful adults they hope to be.

All proceeds collected through the GVN Foundation will go towards the Shelter re-integration project.

Please note your donation will go into an 'International Fundraiser Program Fund' to be used to assist our partner. In all instances we strive to send funds to the stated program above but in the event of a greater need or change in program needs GVNF will determine the destination of funds. By proceeding you agree with the Foundation's refund policy as stated in our legal terms of service

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