Thank you Jennifer and very best wishes

Bram and Jennifer have asked me to provide the regular updates for the blog from now on. Jennifer has been extremely busy since January this year, using her very special skills and experience to support the humanitarian response to the devastation of the Haitian earthquake.

I have always looked forward to Jennifer’s updates and found the information she has provided over the last two years really helpful for me in getting to know about all the great work being done by Bram, the staff, the Board and volunteers.

I live near Aberdeen in Scotland and started working with Bram as a UN online volunteer in January. I have been helping him write and co-ordinate funding proposals.

Thank you Jennifer and very best wishes - you will be a very hard act to follow.

Progress towards a new purpose built hospital

As many of you know, in spite of the service developments at Arrow Web Hospital and with the Community Outreach Team over recent years, we have not been able to meet the huge demand for our services. We need a new purpose built hospital to continually improve the quality and scope of services we provide to the people of Kayole - Soweto and to other areas within the Nairobi slums.
Unfortunately it is particularly difficult to raise funds for buildings from many of the large grant providers.

You may remember that staff from the Japanese Embassy Ambassador’s office honoured us with a visit last year and were very interested in our work. We followed this up with a call to the Grants for Grassroots Projects department at the Embassy and were advised to submit a formal application. Bram hand-delivered the Board’s application to the Embassy in April. We are really pleased to let you know that our application has moved on to the final “screening” stage.

The Embassy has asked us to provide more information about how we can ensure the long term sustainability of a new hospital. The Embassy has advised us that more detailed plans need to be submitted for the next stage by September, as the decisions about awarding grants are made in December. Bram and the Arrow Kenya Board are working on this.

The community have given us a plot of land nearby for a new hospital. Bram has now registered the plot with the Ministry of Lands for a lease period of 99 years. This makes our position much more secure.

Kat photographs two boys on the land allocated for the new hospital.

COCO Visits Arrow Web Hospital

We felt really privileged when Lucy Philipson and her colleague Kat found time to visit Arrow Web last month while they were in Kenya. Lucy is operations and projects manager for COCO ( http://www.coco.org.uk/ ) a registered UK charity which supports grass roots education and healthcare projects in many countries, including Kenya. It works with projects which “encourage community involvement and capacity building and projects that represent an investment in and a commitment to brighter futures for children”. They provide long term support rather than “one off” grants, to carefully selected projects.

Kat has taken many wonderful photos and is also editing a film of their visit which we will post on the website. Lucy will be able to show these to her Board of Directors and COCO’s supporters to help them decide if they are able to work with us in the future.

I visited Lucy in the COCO office in Newcastle in the UK recently. I was able to give Lucy more information about the work being done at Arrow Web Hospital and by the Community Outreach Team. Lucy was very interested to hear about our plans for a new hospital and was very impressed with the work already being done. She told me that Arrow Web Hospital is the kind of grass roots project which COCO likes to support. We will let you know if there are any developments.

The children are fascinated by Kat's camera equipment- many thanks for all the photos Kat

A fruit stall near the hospital

A busy immunisation clinic helping to protect the next generation

Another safe delivery thanks to the staff at Arrow Web Hospital

Waiting to eat his banana

Deep in thought

A little boy receives life saving treatment for malaria at Arrow Web Hospital

Lucy heads up country to another COCO project

Dundee medical students – Catriona and Christine

Catriona and Christine, two medical students from Dundee University Medical School in Scotland have chosen to work at Arrow Web Hospital. They leave for Kenya on July 15th for their six week medical elective.

I live near Dundee so I was able to meet them recently. They are really excited about their visit. They very much look forward to learning from hospital and community staff about providing healthcare in a very different environment. As they are fourth year medical students they will be able to bring a very broad range of skills and experience with them.

Catriona and Christine, we really look forward to hearing all about your experiences and I hope you are ready with your camera Bram!

Japanese Embassy Official Tours Arrow Web Hospital

Meeting with the Japanese Embassy Official

On Monday, 3/16/09, we started off the week with an official visit from a representative from the Embassy of Japan in Kenya. We were very happy to show the progress that has been made at our hospital and to provide the history of how our hospital began. The official reported to us that she was very impressed with how organized we are and said in comparison to other projects she had visited in the community, ours really stood out. We were invited to submit a letter of intent to the Embassy of Japan in Kenya about how we are seeking funding to construct our own building. The hospital has been renting since it's inception and we would really like to have the opportunity to reinvest the money spent on rent each month into improving our facility. Land has been donated for us to build on, but unfortunately if we do not begin using it this year, we risk the land being taken away and designated for something else.

If anyone reading our blog is interested in supporting our hospital building project, we would welcome the opportunity to talk with you. We are very hopeful that the kind people at the Embassy of Japan in Kenya believe in what we are doing and the benefit we bring our community and will help us achieve our goal. We have learned through the years that progress comes when everyone joins hands together in support. We are confident that others will continue to recognize and help us realize our vision for a healthy community.