Edelvale Home
Edelvale home was established in 1959 by sisters of Our Lady of charity from England and the Edelvale Trust in Kenya to uplift the dignity and worth of women.
Its main objective is to rescue, rehabilitate and educate young teenage girls from underprivileged backgrounds such as orphans, vulnerable girls lacking parental care and protection, girls running from sexual exploitation and early marriages. The home is oriented to provide quality care and protection by providing basic food, shelter, clothing, medical care, education, life skills, spiritual nourishment, guidance and counselling towards maturity and self-reliance.
At Edelvale home in Nairobi County, Embakasi East sub-county, the girls live in family model groups in self-contained cottages each with a group mother. The girls receive:
- Christian Education and values
- Primary education
- Secondary education
- Technical training
- Professional training
- Life guidance towards maturity and self-reliance
- Formation into future responsible citizens
- Girls share house chores and upkeep of their kitchen garden
Word from Director
Welcome to Edelvale Children’s home, first of all let me thank you for your interest Edelvale Children’s home. Edelvale Children’s home enables marginalized girls to embark on a life away from the slums through programmes which open doors to equal rights and opportunities for girls to achieve their full potential. This can only be achieved through a holistic approach which includes empowerment of future caregivers of the girls’ and vulnerable families in the community.
During its’ almost seven decades of evolution, our organization has achieved remarkable developments in Education of girls and their successful reintegration back into a family environment. A wealth of expertise, a broad and strong network of partners and well-wishers and the urge to continuously improve our services has helped us to reach where we are today.
We want to congratulate the Kenyan Government for promoting the shift from institutionalizing children to providing family-based care in the recent years. Therefore, we put all our efforts in developing a reintegration and resocialization strategy that can support the children we are working with to remain and grow up in a family-based environment enabling them to achieve their full potential.
In future, with the support of our donors, partners and motivated staff we will continue equipping and transforming marginalized girls through rescue, rehabilitation, reintegration and finally resocialization into the society. We will further strengthen the resocialization aspect of our approach and the empowerment activities for the caregiver families and vulnerable community members to become self-reliant, provide a conducive environment for their children’s long-term development.
Our Team
We are a team of motivated psychosocial counselor, social worker, business advisors, house mothers, Support staff, administration staff and management staff with sound background in Human Resource management, Monitoring and Evaluation, Financial Management and Programme Management.
The diverse professional backgrounds strengthen our programme work. Learning from each other and through experience is key to the success in our work and implementing change for the continuous improvement of Edelvale Home services
Child Protection Programme
The Child Protection Programme supports vulnerable girls from the slums of Nairobi faced by abuse from their relatives or guardians. This helps them to successfully embark on a life away from the slums, where their rights are fully realized.
The Homes cares over 60 girls within a year, at least 30 girls or so residential in the home and the rest being supported after re-integration with their families or guardians. These girls are between the age of 11 to 16 years, A girls can stay in the home for at least 3 years depending with the case then we re-integrate them back with their guardians.
The programme works with the motto of sharing and caring where the girls are given basic needs of food, shelter, health and education and offers psychological support to the girls and their guardians. Following successful completion of grade 9, the girls are reintegrated with caregivers, and the progress in the family is being followed up until the girl completes her college or university education
Activities under Child Protection Programme
1. RESCUE
Rescue refers to the identification and recruitment of girls in street situations and those in the community at risk of ending up on the streets as a way of survival. It encompasses building rapport and all the life-saving activities in the streets and community. Once the girl has decided to be admitted to our Home it will enter into the residential rehabilitation process:
2. REHABILITATION
Rehabilitation refers to all the interventions aimed at behavior change, restoring the girl to her childhood and reinstalling attachment between the girl and the caregivers. It includes: provision of education; medical care; nutritional support; as well as talent identification and nurturing. It also includes psychosocial support, as well as sexual violence prevention training.
3. REINTEGRATION
Reintegration involves the re-unification of the girl(s) with their guardians or relatives, a key step in the process towards resocialization. We promote reintegration of the girls within the family and in the community as a sustainable measure of support where the girl receives the necessary care and protection to grow and develop. Strategies applied here include: family mediation, provision of secondary school, and college education.
4. RESOCIALISATION
Resocialization is designed to supporting the girl to readjust to the family and community environment and rebuilding her social role in the same. Therefore, we monitor the girl’s and family’s ability to cope with the new situation at home, in school and the community through regular follow ups and support measures that take into account the girls and caregivers immediate and long-term needs in the process of becoming independent of RDC support.
