If something works, such as how for years the Baraka Farm has been providing support to our longtime partner, the Lewa Children’s Home in Eldoret, Kenya (founded by our international spokesperson Phyllis Keino), we strive to replicate it elsewhere in the sub-Saharan African countries where we work.

This is particularly true today as the coronavirus continues to plague countries including Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone where our partners operating children’s homes struggle to keep the orphaned and abandoned children in their care fed as rampant inflation is causing the prices of food staples to increase on practically a daily basis.

For example, the Baraka Farm not only provides food for the orphans and abandoned children who live at the Lewa Children’s Home but generates sales from its crops and dairy products which help enable it to be self-sufficient, thereby meeting our overarching goal for all our partners.

In the community of Rutile in Sierra Leone, Bread and Water for Africa® has been providing support to the Karen Baird Children’s Home (KBCH), which has been part of the our partner, Faith Healing Development Organization (FHDO), establishment for many years.

This year, Bread and Water for Africa® is undertaking a similar food self-sustainability project to help FHDO cultivate approximately 220 acres of rice farmland and an additional 30 acres of cassava (both food staples in Sierra Leone).

Roughly 100 children orphaned and abandoned children call the KBCH their home, many of whom also attend the Logos Academy in Moriba Town, also through the support of Bread and Water for Africa®.

Phyllis describes the new project “a tremendous opportunity” for KBCH to not only create an extra source of income for the children’s home and generating a path towards self-sufficiency while providing a source of food for the children but also to utilize as a teaching and training model for the older youth living there.

Due the country’s current economic situation, and specifically the rural and impoverished district where the children’s home is located, providing food to feed some 100 children three healthy and filling meals three times each day is a considerable challenge, to say the least, and we are counting on our supporters to help us rise to that challenge.

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the globe, and nowhere is the pain being felt more than in sub-Saharan African countries where healthcare facilities are sparse and lacking in basic medicines and supplies, governments lack the funds to adequately address the issue and hunger is even more prevalent, especially for the youngest.

But thanks to the supporters of Bread and Water for Africa® we are working every day to help ease the uncertainty of where their next meal is coming from for thousands through our initiatives, such as the Karen Baird Children’s Home agricultural program.