World vision country director Dickens Thunde has expressed his disappointment over increased cases of defilement in the country.
Speaking when he toured and inspected philanthropic activities at Nucleus Children Trust (NCT), a locally based organization fighting for the children’s rights, at Kaburengo village in Matete district, Thunde regretted the high number of defilement cases reported on daily basis and appealed to the government to put in stringent measure to curb the situation terming it as a national disaster.
He said vigorous campaigns aimed at sensitizing the nation about the children’s rights as well as warning against the vice should be carried out across the country and also severe punishment be placed on perpetrators. Thunde told Kenyan men folk to desist from sexually abusing young girls, but instead asked it to consider protecting, educating and exposing the girl child to good opportunities for a better future.
“You men what do you get from this little children, you men why are you going for the kids, why are you afraid of their mothers, Why would men be perpetrating this child abuse here? This is the highest form of violation of the children’s rights, nobody from outside or anywhere will finish this problem except you people here, lets protect our children, lets nurture them, lets expose the purity for them to grow and develop because they are our future,” said Thunde.
The director disclosed that his organization was basically championing for the child protection and ensuring that they lived in a pleasant environment where their rights were fully observed saying it pains to note the increased child abuse cases.
Elsewhere Thunde urged Local Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) in the country to invest in self sustaining projects in order to end the culture of over dependence on donations from international communities.
Impressed by some of the sustainable incoming generating projects, including bee keeping, poultry and horticulture, mounted by the Nucleus Children’s Trust organization under leadership of its Director, Mr. John Tharuba Kariuki, the World Vision boss challenged other local non profiting making organizations to emulate the same.
“Locally based organizations in Kenya and Africa as a whole don’t need to keep relying on World Vision or other international organizations to fund their activities when there are immense economic investment opportunities for sustaining themselves,” said Thunde.
“I am calling upon similar organizations to benchmark themselves with Nucleus Trust Children. Honestly speaking, we only need five similar organizations here and the Kenyan NGO story would be a totally different one.” He said.
Nucleus Children Trust which began in 2004 with the main objective of championing rights for children as well as protecting them against abuse, to date has about 3,500 orphaned and vulnerable children are under its care and trust.
“Besides defilement and sexual molestation, majority of children under our care are orphaned many having lost their parents to the HIV/AIDs scourge,” said Kariuki who added a bigger percentage of the organization’s caregivers are women who are HIV positive and whom the organization has economically empowered in one way or the other.
“Each of our caregivers has either a dairy animal or poultry, which have greatly helped them meet their daily basic needs,” added Kariuki, who further disclosed bee keeping was the major income generating activity for his organization.
“I am proud of and encourage the Nucleus Children Trust to keep up the good work,” said the obviously delighted World Vision country director.
