Rev Mary Kinoti, 45, says that action speaks more than words. She is compassionate about orphans and vulnerable children. She tells KIUNDU WAWERU how she lives the words of Matthew 14:16 that paraphrased says, "Feed them."
"The family unit is at its weakest. Majority of Kenyans are poor and unable to provide for their families. The rich few don’t care and the increasing middle-class is out and about, enriching itself."
Rev Mary Kinoti with musician Jimmy Gait at Kambi Muru, in Kibera. [Photo: Courtesy] |
Her next revelation is shocking. A while back, Mary attended a conference. One of the speakers jolted the audience out of their senses. "The speaker quoted statistics that said the youngest Kenyan drug addict is aged four years." For Pete’s sake, get me out of here!
Well, not surprisingly, nor farfetched, drugs and alcohol are the pastime of the majority poor. For the last ten years, Mary has dedicated herself to working with the impoverished people of Kibera, the largest slum in the world.
Mary has seen the children from Kibera take after their parents, drowning in alcohol and abusing drugs, at a time they should be in school. In contrast, the children of the well-off are re-enacting The Merchant of Venice when they are barely out of their diapers, and as one man put it, Standard Three pupils carrying heavy school bags; heavier than the ones they carried while in Form Four; all in the quest of being in the national’s 100 best students or schools.
"Most children in the slums have not benefited from the free primary education," says Mary, "they cannot afford uniform and food."
Mary wonders how Kibera and other slums will ever get out of poverty if their children don’t get education. It’s said that misery likes company, and when it’s done wasting Kibera parents, then why not seduce their children?
"Education is my heartbeat," says the ordained Methodist minister, who is happy that two of the students they rescued in Kibera are now in the university. Many others have graduated from mid-level colleges and vocational institutes and are working.
The charity work started in the year 2000, when Luke Kinoti, CEO, Fusion Capital Ltd founded the Window Development Fund. From the family income, Mary says they identified orphans and vulnerable children from Dagoretti and Kibera, and provided them mostly with psychosocial counselling. They registered as an NGO and formed a board comprising of respected academicians and professionals.
Echoes of mercy
They later changed the name to Riziki Kenya. It provides, in addition to education, other transformational programmes like feeding, HIV and Aids prevention and management, among others.
"Echoes of Mercy is the feeding programme project, where we feed children with hot lunch of high nutritional value," she says.
Besides this, Riziki Kenya, which operates from two offices in Kibera through the help of community organisations and churches, identifies most needy children and households who are then provided with dinner packs and breakfast.
The number of beneficiaries in the Riziki factsheet reads from hundreds to thousands. This includes 1,027 education sponsorships, with 6,209 benefiting from the feeding programmes in selected centres, among other areas of interventions.
In the year 2000, Mary was commissioned by the Methodist Church as the Missioner of Hope for the African children. She was trained on working with children at risk in the community by the general board of Global Ministries. And Mary has not disappointed. She has continued advocating for children’s rights through the child development programme.
In a way, through Riziki, with support from the board and their partners, Mary has realised her childhood dream.
She grew up in Meru and her favourite place was the health centre. The white nurses, who seemed to so much care for the sick people and children fascinated her no less.
"I developed compassion from there. After Form Four, I wanted to become a nun, but my parents urged me to go for ‘A’ Levels so that I would be better-placed to serve people," she says.
Intense interviews
At Kibirichia Methodist Church circuit in Meru, there was no other woman church minister and when Mary told the church leaders she wanted to join them, they wondered why. She went through intense interviews and in 1996, she was finally ordained.
To her subjects, Mary is a symbol of her beliefs in education. She holds a Bachelors of Divinity, Masters in Theology and Religious Studies. She is also studying for a Masters in Child Development. Mary has just completed her PhD whose thesis was Faith-based transformational development.
This Friday, Riziki Kenya will be celebrating its 11th anniversary gala dinner at Kenyatta International Conference Centre. It will also launch the Education Sponsorship Fund at the event.
"There are many children who need assistance with education and psychosocial support," says Mary adding, "As a preacher, I want my actions to speak by transforming a person’s life."
