Helping children in Kenya from the kitchen table
ALISON Lowndes is sitting at her laptop in the warmth and comfort of her North Yorkshire home.
This is where she spends more than 60 hours a week, unpaid, running the online charity Able Volunteers International Fund (AVIF).
She set up AVIF three years ago to organise volunteers to help projects in Kenya, but the internet has made it much more than that.
At the click of a button she has successfully helped a villager in a remote Kenyan settlement link up with an organisation which can supply a water tank, giving villagers their own water supply for the first time.
"That is the power of the internet and social networking," says Alison, 39, who sets up virtual online communities via Facebook and other social networking sites to allow people who would never normally come into contact with each other communicate regularly.
"It may mean that the chap from the African village has had to walk 10km to the nearest internet caf, but it was worth it as we were able to put him in touch with someone who could help him. AVIF is about physical and virtual volunteering."
Alison, who has a background in IT, first got the idea for AVIF after running a number of summer schools in north east China in 2002.
She spent nine months there with her two young children, organising a team to teach English as a foreign language.
After returning to the UK, she went back to working for internet-based companies and then decided to go back to university. But on leaving university and with contacts in Kenya, she decided she wanted to start summer schools in Kenya.
"Unlike north eastern China there is no money in Kenya, so I knew that I would have to recruit volunteers," explains Alison. As a result, in 2006, AVIF was launched.
"The joy of being a virtual charity means that we have no overheads and so we make no charges. Everything is done online, mainly by me. It means that everything goes into the projects. It also means that we can organise volunteers from across the world as the internet is global and people from all walks of life can share their knowledge at the push of a button."
But there is nothing virtual about the work being done to help hundreds of children and adults in Africa.
For the last three years, Alison has been organising teams of volunteers, who pay their own expenses, to spend five weeks in the summer doing a variety of jobs at projects ranging from orphanages to hospitals and schools.
"There is a lot of corruption in Kenya – probably 85 per cent of the projects are bogus, it is only by visiting them that you find out which ones are kosher. The problem is that the country has become reliant on handouts and is no longer self-sufficient. I wanted to create something that was sustainable, to give the people the skills to help themselves."
It was one of Alison's German volunteers who came across the Ingrid Education Centre in Nairobi.
Set up by local teacher Douglas, his wife Grace and a committee of volunteer teachers, the centre is an oasis in the middle of the Matopeni slum, ravaged by poverty, hunger, illness and deprivation.
The whole area is dominated by a quarry where children and adults work shoulder to shoulder smashing rocks. It is a hard and poor existence.
In 2006, Douglas set up the school in an attempt to help break the cycle of deprivation and give hope to children in the slums. It looks little more than a ramshackle of corrugated iron and lean-to buildings, but to the children of the slums it is hope.
"We were very eager to provide some basic education to the children of the slums," says Douglas, who has his own blog.
Although primary education is supposed to be free in Kenya, many miss out because they cannot afford the uniform or books.
Thanks to Douglas, there are now 116 vulnerable children at the centre, dubbed Ingrid's angels.
"The school gives them a hot meal and a drink – for most of them it will be the only meal they get," says Alison.
Volunteers from AVIF helped to fit a water tank which gave access to fresh water for the first time.
"It is an amazing place, run by amazing people," says Charlotte Armitage from Morley, near Leeds, who has just returned from an AVIF organised trip to Kenya.
"To those children it means the world. The poverty and deprivation in the city is beyond words."
But just when everything was going well, the school was hit by a bombshell.
"The landlord who owned the land said he needed to sell it. They managed to get the deposit together but then he announced that he needed all the money – 2,500 – by a deadline of December 29, or he would have to sell it," says Charlotte.
The average Kenyan earns 975 a year, so it was impossible for Douglas and his family to raise that amount of money so quickly.That is where Alison and her online community came to the rescue.
"We set up a Just Giving site and slowly the money started to trickle in. But then something amazing happened. An anonymous UK donor gave 1,500 with Gift Aid, and it took us to the total needed. Everyone was jumping for joy and the future of the school has been secured."
Douglas now wants to raise enough money to buy a plot of land to grow vegetables to feed the children and to sell, and also to erect some permanent classrooms.
But this is just one of the many projects helped by Alison, her team of volunteers and her online community.
Amazingly, Alison has never visited the Ingrid Education Centre as she runs everything from home in Summerbridge, near Harrogate.
"I haven't been to Kenya for years. There is really no need to. I can do everything online. There is another trustee based in Nairobi and we do hope to have a face-to-face board meeting, but it is hard to justify the costs."
As a lone parent to Robyn, 14 and Ben, 11, Alison, who lives on Income Support, admits that she does find it hard to make ends meet.
"I have been for a number of job interviews but I think people are put off because of my commitment to AVIF. I do it voluntarily because I don't want to charge people. This is not a gap year organisation. It is a non-profit making charity.
"Our volunteers are mainly students, or people who want to do some good during their holidays. There is a big rise in 'voluntourism' and 'ecotourism' – people want to go and help as well as see another country."
Alison believes that the virtual charity is the way of the future.
"If you look at some of the bigger charities only a small percentage of the money they raise actually goes to the people who need it. Most goes on administration. With the internet you have a virtual office which you can run at home to maximise the amount of money going to those that need it."
www.avif.org.net
www.justgiving.com/ Ingridsangels
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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