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!

Students from The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Over the last year, Arrow Web Hospital has been honored to welcome a variety of guests at our facility.  We truly believe in building strong partnerships within the international health community and part of that involves supporting promising students working through their medical training program.  This year, Arrow Web Hospital welcomed several students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  The students traveled to Kenya as part of a 2-week medical elective. Yukie, Kent, Aggie, Clive, Shan and Zaida worked under the guidance of the Arrow Web Hospital staff.  We sincerely hope that this was a valuable learning experience for each of the students and that it will serve them well in the future as they begin their professional careers.  We would also like to thank the students for their donating a box of medical gloves to our facility.

Community Health Improvement Seminar

Arrow Web Hospital partnered with the Embakasi District Health Nurse's Office and recently held a seminar at the Hotel Central Park Nairobi.  This partnership was initiated by Mrs. Florence, Arrow Web Hospital's Community Outreach Team Leader.  The seminar's focus was on community health improvements.  All of the community health centers and clinics in Embakasi were invited to attend. We discussed the importance of networking among the existing health care providers.  All involved agreed that a coordinating team should be selected and we are happy to report that one of the Arrow Web Hospital doctors was chosen to lead this team. The event was more successful than we ever anticipated.  We are all looking forward to working in collaboration to promote healthy living in our community.

Alison Lowndes from AVIF Visits Arrow Web Hospital

Alison Lowndes, the founder of AVIF in the UK, recently traveled to Kenya and paid a visit to Bramuel and the Arrow Web Hospital staff.  Alison is actively working to help the hospital raise the funds necessary to pay for a shipping container to get needed medical equipment from the UK to the hospital in Kenya.  The shipping container will be filled with equipment donated by UK based charity, Aid to Hospitals Worldwide.

(Did you notice the great bicycles from Tour D'Afrique in the picture above?)

You can help us raise the funds necessary to ship this life saving equipment to Kenya - you can make an online donation by clicking here and visiting our page at Just Giving.

It is critical that these funds be raised before July 2010 to pay for the container to ship as planned.

Help Fund a Shipping Container Filled with Medical Supplies

You may notice the JustGiving widget that was added to the blog this week.  Last year, Alison Lowndes of AVIF told us about Aid 2 Hospitals Worldwide in the UK.  Alison made a trip to visit them and found out what would be necessary for the hospital to receive help obtaining the medical equipment we are currently lacking.  We are happy to report that the fantastic people at Aid 2 Hospitals Worldwide have managed to source an entire container-full of urgently needed medical and surgical equipment for the hospital, but now we need to work on raising the funds necessary to get the container from the UK to Nairobi.  

You can help us get this container to Nairobi.  We need your help.  Every little bit takes us that much closer to reaching our goal.  Please visit our fundraising page at http://www.justgiving.com/arrowweb and consider giving what you can.  

Even if you cannot help by donating money - some of the other ways that you can help include:

1.  Share a link to our fundraising page on Twitter or Facebook.

2.  Write about our hospital on your blog or share the fundraising widget.

3.  Share a link to the fundraiser in your email signature.

We really appreciate your support.  It will go a long way toward helping us promote healthy living and better serve our community.

Supporting Survivors of Sexual Assault

Arrow Web Hospital has opened a rescue center for women and girls who are survivors of sexual assault in our community.  So far, 30 women and girls have benefited from treatment.  Once treatment is obtained, we provide the women with a letter to take to the police.  We have hired a new doctor who will dedicate time to this to the center.

TOUR D'AFRIQUE DONATES 15 ADDITIONAL BICYCLES

Many of you may remember that last year, Tour D'Afrique made a generous donation of bicycles for the Arrow Web Hospital community health team.  We are so pleased to share pictures from this year's bicycle donation ceremony held again at the beautiful Indaba East Africa Campsite in Nairobi.  Tour D'Afrique has made another very generous donation of 15 bicycles to Arrow Web Hospital.  We thank you for making it possible for us to reach out to more and more people.  Enjoy the pictures from the ceremony!

Watching the children of the Masai community dance for the bicycle donation ceremony.

Volunteers looking on watching the children dance.

Chairman of Arrow Web Hospital chatting with members of the Masai community.

Mike with the Chairman of Arrow Web Hospital.

One of the Arrow Web Hospital doctors addressing those in attendance at the bicycle donation ceremony.

Chairman of Arrow Web Hospital with the bicycles donated to our community health team.