HopeCore Heroes: Inspiring Stories of Those Behind Our Programs
Stories of the inspiring humans behind our HopeCore program.
300,000 home visits…. Over 1 million dollars loaned…. Over 12,000 lives impacted by economic empowerment….. 500 villages reached with healthcare services…
The impact of HopeCore and the magnitude of our program has become immense over the last 20 years. But what we often don’t hear enough about, are the inspiring stories from the men and women, who make our program possible.
Below we will share a few inspiring stories from our HopeCore Heroes: these stories have been selected from our leadership team and they are individuals who have dedicated their lives to their work, despite often facing very challenging circumstances.
We hope you enjoy learning about some of the faces of our HopeCore Heroes!
Winjoy Micheni
Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare! Meet community health nurse Winjoy Micheni, one of the longest-serving HopeCore staff. Winjoy has demonstrated determination and effort during her 11 years at the organization.
Initially, Winjoy joined HopeCore as a volunteer in 2010. In the same year, she got employed as a community nurse, during the time she was the only nurse at the organization. Over the years, Winjoy has attended to many patients which she cares for with motherly love and compassion. She always follows up on them to ensure the treatment outcome is positive and that they have recovered. She is a good counselor, and most of the clients she has counseled have shown significant change.
Winjoy, together with her team members, visits the community for the village-based maternal child health clinics where she treats the under-five children, ANC mothers and offers family planning services. They also visit schools for mobile clinics. They also deworm and conduct vision screening to identify children with abnormal vision.
Winjoy is quite excited about getting a chance to help and create an impact on the community. She gets job satisfaction with the kind of trust the community has with the services they receive from Village HopeCore. She is quite motivated that the organization possesses resources like enough drugs and reliable transport even to the most remote part of the sub-county. She can reach her clients on time and provide services that are needed.
Working at HopeCore has also improved her and she has progressed in her career and gained enormous experience through the years, especially from the organization's training.
Persistence and resilience only come from having been given a chance to work through difficult problems.
Winjoy Micheni, RN
Alice Kaimenyi
Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off; this quote from Sam Altman is what drives one of the best and outstanding Village HopeCore staff, Alice Kaimenyi.
Alice joined village HopeCore in 2014 as a volunteer, and after getting the necessary training, she got employed as a Micro Enterprise field officer, a position she holds up to date. She is responsible for community mobilization, which involves mobilizing new groups that could potentially get funded by Village HopeCore, involved in all department training like business and street business training, and attends loan collection meetings. She is also involved in appraising the groups to be funded.
Alice has been instrumental in the success of our Micro Enterprise program by helping the department achieve 100% loan repayment by clients. She came up with ways and ideas for default management, like working closely with the local administration like the chiefs and their assistants. Her commitment and hard work are evident as she reports to work as early as 6.00 am for default management to get the loan clients before they start their daily activities; it's quite hard to get them during the day. This has also helped reduce the number of clients defaulting on their loans.
Alice Kaimenyi
Lyn Kathambi
Three out of every 100 school-going children have refractive errors which require correction with glasses. Success can come in many forms, and for a child to succeed in school, there are many contributing factors. Good vision is a key to children's success in school. Children's eyes are constantly in use in the classroom and at the playing ground. When their vision is not functioning correctly, their education and participation in school and play can be hampered.
DOT glasses have adjustable frames, a radical lens concept, and easy vision testing tools that provide access to people's improved vision. In February, Village HopeCore conducted a DOT glasses pilot. 27 school going children received the glasses. One of the beneficiaries was a 14-year pupil Lyn Kathambi from kairuni primary school. Lyn had been having vision problems and could not read properly, especially the tiny letters in textbooks. She had visited various hospitals for a checkup, but her parents could not afford the recommended glasses. The problem affected her studies negatively since she could not read correctly. The parents were quite relieved when she received free DOT glasses. The glasses helped improve her vision, and she can read properly. The DOT glasses have been of great help and have enhanced her scores. She is grateful to Village HopeCore for the glasses, and she will strive to perform even better in her subsequent exams.
Lyn Kathambi
Lilian Gakii
Family Planning services support people's decisions about when, or if, they would like to have children by offering education, counseling, and birth control methods.
Lillian Gakii from Kianjuki had been having a problem with family planning methods. Most of them were not working correctly, or they had severe side effects like the Depo. This led to her having seven children, with the last three just one year apart. She had planned to have just three kids, but now she has seven. Lillian is not employed, and her husband is just working as a casual on a neighbor’s farm. She could not afford to take care of the large family, and the husband was quite concerned about the size of the family. Community health nurse Marvin Mutugi met Lillian during the home-based maternal child health clinic. Marvin advised her to try IUD, which does not have any hormones. Lillian visited our office clinic and received the IUD. It worked well, and now she can concentrate on raising her children.
Lilian Gakii with her daughter Christine
Florah Kawira
Florah Kawira is a Community Health Volunteer from Kirumi. Florah decided to become a volunteer so that she could help improve her community health status. She admires the closeness CHVs have to the community members and how that could be used when educating them.
Florah is very knowledgeable And eloquent and she stands out as the best CHV we have in our program. She conducts the most household visits compared to other CHVs. For instance, other CHVs average 20 households in a month but Florah does 100 on average.
The community members appreciate her work. She is a good health educator and well informed on health topics as she has attended all the training organized by HopeCore and the County government. She has also undergone a short course on HIV & Aids counseling.
The main challenge Florah faces is having to balance between her volunteer work and tending for her family. She explained that she has to make sure she seeks money to cater to her family before going to the community for home visits.
Florah Kawira was recognized as the best CHV in 2019.
Florah appreciates the monthly stipend she gets from HopeCore each month. She loves the education seminars and the teaching aids that she regularly gets from our organization, especially the flipbooks she always uses while conducting health education.
Florah Kawira
Franklin Mugendis
Franklin Mugendis a thirty-three-year-old man and one of the beneficiaries of the Micro Enterprise program. Franklin had to drop out of school at a young age due to financial constraints and spent several years working casual jobs for his source of income. Many times he would question if he would be able to make it, but he kept his hope alive. His hard work, determination, and refusal to play the victim is the reason he is where he is today. He is an inspiration to everyone who is struggling today and is the very definition of Hope changes everything and that’s why he is our hero.
Franklin runs a successful bakery business which he started about eight years ago. He started by making crunchy cakes and selling them at a local market and when he joined Village HopeCore’s Micro Enterprise program. The business mentorship, training, and economic empowerment pushed his business to the next level. With the support of HopeCore his business has grown from the small-scale sale of crunchy cakes at the market to having his own oven, making a variety of cakes in addition to crunchy cakes and selling in bulk to schools and resellers all over Maara sub-county. Currently, he gets a monthly profit of KES 48,000(USD 480). He has been able to purchase an additional motorbike to help him in the distribution of his very sought-after cakes. Franklin has started a pig-rearing business. Franklin is contributing to HopeCore’s vision of having a transformed enabled society able to contribute to their personal, social, and economic challenges effectively by being able to provide employment to three individuals who in turn are able to feed their families and educate their children.
Franklin Mugendis
WINJOY KAWIRAS STORY
The Boda Business (motorcycle taxi) in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya, is usually dominated by male drivers since the business operations began in the county. However, the case is not the same for thirty-five-year-old Winjoy who has defied all odds to embrace the male-dominated business that has seen her earn a living and realise her ambitions in life.
Talk of Boda- Boda business (motorcycle taxi) in Tharaka Nithi County then whoever you are talking to will quickly link it to male operators who have dominated the scene since its introduction in the country. However, the case is not the same for thirty-five-year-old Winjoy who has defied all odds to embrace the male-dominated business that has seen her earn a living and realize her ambitions in life. Born in Mwiria in Maara sub county, Winjoy went through numerous experiences in life before realizing that she could make it in life by joining Village HopeCore group and investing in a motorbike business. She is the epitome of what a man can do, a woman can do better. Winjoy acknowledges that running a business associated with men comes with numerous challenges that need a lot of discipline and principles to survive. She says there are some customers, especially men who often decline to pay her with intentions of luring her to their houses or just taking advantage of her femininity. In such circumstances, she opts to forfeit the cash.
Other male customers fear she could drop them or cause an accident while carrying them, hence declining to be carried by a woman. There are others who want to hold her tight as she carries them in a move that is aimed at distracting her. Winjoy has often met women who discourage her from doing such a business and advise her to venture into feminine businesses such as selling vegetables, but she remains adamant and focused on her job. At the end of every month, Winjoy saves KES 16,800 ($160 USD) after extracting other domestic expenditures in the home together with supporting her siblings for whom she pays school fees. With the increased income, she has been able to purchase a calf, start a poultry business, and a pig rearing business. Of the two motorbikes she owns, she has employed one person to ride the other motorbike, thus promoting the vision of HopeCore of empowering communities. She is an inspiration to other women to break the status quo and pursue their dreams regardless of whether the enterprise is male dominated or not.
WINJOY KAWIRAS STORY
