Dedan Kimathi Foundation Conducts ‘Chapati Festival’ for Street Festival with Partners

WED 18TH DECEMBER, 2024

Universally, most people embrace the month of December as one of reflecting on the life of Jesus and celebrating his birth marked on 25th December annually. The spirit of christmas ignites a culture of showing love and sharing amongst ourselves and with the less fortunate people in our societies especially orphans, the aged, the poor, sicky and street families among others.

On Thursday 18th December 2024 , Dedan Kimathi Foundation in partnership with Toto Kalezi Foundation and Boychild Love Foundation conducted a street families feeding program dubbed ‘Chapati Festival’.

The participants mobilized for foodstuffs and prepared hundreds of chapatis, rice, vegetables and stew for street families in Ruiru town and around Thika Road Mall. Not less than 200 members of the street families enjoyed a satisying warm home cooked meal and had extra to pack and carry to consume the following day.

As the organizer and host of the charitable event, Toto Kalezi Foundation Director, Rev. Miriam Wairimu, emphasized on the need to look out for each other and share with those in need. She likened that to the expression of love to others as we love ourselves.

While feeding the street families, our team learnt of the myriad of challenges the families encounter on the streets among them being bullied by seniors for money forcing them to engage in wrong activities to help them acquire a few coins. It was saddening to learn that most of them go for a couple of days without food to a point where they go through garbage to sustain themselves. Despite most of them feeling comfortable in the streets, a few could not hide their genuine interest to be taken from the streets to a better place for education and rehabilitation to secure them from already existing drugs addictions.

Our humanitarian mission is rooted in the freedom fighters’ harmonius co-existence in the forests enabled by sharing the little they had to survive. With great love; men, women and their children would ‘split a bean’ amongst themselves to keep going displaying invaluable care for each other.

We deeply believe in humanity as our religion as we cannot claim to know God if we lack empathy for each other.