A Discussion with Sister Mary Owens, Executive Director, Nyumbani Center, Nairobi, Kenya
With: Mary Owens Berkley Center Profile
May 23, 2016
Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice fellowship project, undergraduate student Khaliyah Legette interviewed Sister Mary Owens, the executive director of Nyumbani in Nairobi, Kenya. In this interview, conducted in May 2016, Owens provides an overview of Nyumbani’s various programs and discusses the fundraising efforts that help support its work providing HIV/AIDS services to children and affected families in Kenya.
Can you please state your name and title?
My name is Sister Mary Owens, and I am the executive director of the Children of God Relief Institute: Nyumbani (COGRI).
What are your responsibilities as executive director?
My responsibilities as the executive director are the oversight of all the programs and, in particular, I do that through the managers in the different programs. I am responsible for the policy of COGRI, namely the mission and vision. I also am involved in fundraising. [Founding director] Father [Angelo] D’Agostino was a very public figure in fundraising—not only in his own country, but also in the other countries where we have international boards, so I have continued that.
Can you describe how your experience here has been?
I’ve been here since 1991. I was fully committed to the vision and mission of Father D’Agostino, because I knew that these children, as Father D’Agostino would say, are the most marginalized in our world today. So it gave me great joy and honor to be able to reach out to these children, as we have over the last 25 years, and help them grow up like any other children: healthily and happily.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face?
Because Nyumbani is donor-funded, there is always the challenge of ensuring that the funds are there so that the programs can operate. Part of our vision and mission is our dependence on the providence of God, and that sustains me throughout. I’ve never experienced that God has let us down.
There is always the need to push the frontiers in this particular area we’re in, the world of HIV. Father D’Agostino, in his time, pushed for anti-retroviral medication for the children. He also pushed for access to free education. Previous Kenyan president [Mwai] Kibaki established free education in primary schools; but Father D’Agostino had to have the children take the government of Kenya to court in order to get that. It took some lobbying to get USAID on board, but he also managed that with the help of board members in the United States.
Another area that I have been lobbying is access to resistance testing. It became clear that we needed to have access to resistance testing because our children had been on anti-retroviral medication since the 2000s, and some of them were showing failure. So finally, with the help of donors, I managed to get a genetic analyzer, which tests for resistance. The cost of this is excessive, so I’m currently trying to lobby to get lower cost access, so we’ll also be able to make it available to the outside community.
This is one of the challenges of the developing world. The developed world believes—at least they act like they believe—that as long as we have basic help, the developing world is fine, which is not true. We should have quality healthcare, quality...whatever.
There is also a gross injustice of the stigma of persons living with HIV. It is simply a medical condition, and like any other medical condition, and it needs access for care and treatment. But stigmatizing it is totally unacceptable and unjust. Part of it appears to be connected with sexuality. Sexuality, as you know, is still taboo in certain parts of the world. HIV is associated with promiscuous sexuality. But it doesn’t matter how people got the virus; now that they have the virus, they need to get access to care and treatment, and need to be treated with dignity as an equal person and not stigmatized in society. Some children have inherited HIV and are living with it through no fault of their own. One of the greatest challenges is to prevent the transmission of the virus to children.
The other area that I’m aware of is that there’s still racial discrimination. There’s a mindset that I often come across in the developed world, which doesn’t see Africans as equal to Caucasian people, and this is often due to ignorance. I get asked: "Can Africans do that?" Which is totally uninformed, and of course also unjust. I come across this sometimes: "Oh, you’re doing that…in Africa?"
What are some of the biggest successes?
Our children are living! Our oldest is 34. Two of our children are in stable relationships, and they have children who are HIV-negative. They’re all going through tertiary-level education, so that they are empowered to look for employment and become self-reliant. As children grow up and become adults, they also advise parents; not that parents always accept the advice. So our older children are telling us: "Sister Mary, it’s better if you…" So that’s marvelous, because they feel they’re just like any other young person. That’s happening more and more, because there’s so many of them.
What is the most rewarding part of your position?
Assisting these babies, toddlers, young people, and adolescents to live full lives to fulfill God’s plan for them. Each one of them is a beautiful creation of God, and each has a vocation to develop and realize their full potential and thank God for their lives.
What do you think is the greatest impact of having such a wide variety of funding and donation sources?
When you’re donor-funded, you have to widen the horizon of where you get funding. We’re blessed that USAID funds us to the level that they do, since 1990. It gives us the chance to do more work, and also a means of creating awareness among people and properly informing them about what HIV is: it is simply a medical condition that can be contained, and young people living with it can still live full lives. So there is that element of informing the people and reducing the stigma.
Through the funding, you talk to so many different audiences about Nyumbani, so you can give them correct information. That’s one of the benefits of it. Meeting people from different parts of the world, and getting into their lives. But it is time consuming. Our attitude is: every donation matters, no matter how small or how big. It is the person who’s giving, and the generosity of that person is what is significant.
Can you give an overview of the fundraising at Nyumbani?
Nyumbani has multiple programs.
The first is Nyumbani Home for children living with HIV who were abandoned, and almost all are orphans. It opened in 1992, and currently we care for 123 children. A number of them are in boarding school, so during the school term they’re not here, and others who are in tertiary level education are out in hostels or other accommodations.
Nyumbani Home is donor-dependent. We have five international boards in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Ireland, and Spain. Nyumbani U.S. sends in a monthly contribution of $12,000, which goes to the Nyumbani Home. Nyumbani U.K. has a small number of sponsors for these children. Nyumbani Italy and Nyumbani Ireland have a larger number of sponsors for these children. We also have a laboratory, which began in 1998, and any profit from the laboratory goes to the support of Nyumbani Home. World Children’s Fund has been supporting us over the past 10 years, sending in a monthly contribution of 4,000 euros. Medicines for Humanity also sends us medicines for opportunistic infections. The U.S. government PEPFAR program covers all anti-retroviral medication for the children here. And because we are very centrally situated in Nairobi, and easily accessible, we have quite a number of visitors who come and bring donations. And more and more, the local Kenyan people are supporting Nyumbani Home.
The second program is Lea Toto, which means “bring up a child.” It was started in 1998, and now it has eight centers surrounding the city of Nairobi in the informal settlements, caring for 3,200 children, who live with a family member. We look after their holistic care other than accommodation. It is 80 percent funded by the U.S. government PEPFAR program. Holistic care includes food support for families who fall below the poverty line, and sometimes even rent. We have a respite center in Nyumbani Home for children who have become severely malnourished in the Lea Toto program, where we rehabilitate them and train the caregiver. The other 20 percent of support for the Lea Toto program comes from our Irish board and our U.K. board. And Medicines for Humanity provides funding for medicines. From the Kenyan government, we get the prophylaxis called Septrin.
Another program is Nyumbani Village, started in 2006. This is an outreach program for the two generations left behind to the HIV pandemic: grandparents whose children have passed away and are left to care for their biological grandchildren, and groups of children who have no parents and no grandparents and are living in child-headed households. We invite grandparents who are destitute and often aged to come into the Nyumbani Village with their biological grandchildren, and we ask them to also accept and care for children from child-headed households, to form a blended family of about ten children, headed by the grandparent. Currently we have 100 such families in residence, which is 1,000 children and 100 grandparents.
Nyumbani Village is a simulated village that has all the services that the grandparents and children need, including primary education, high school education, tertiary level education, technical training. Others go to other colleges and universities. Only about 4 percent of the children in the village are living with HIV. We have a clinic and a laboratory for their needs and for the needs of the other children and grandparents.
It is also open to the community. We have a farm where we grow vegetables and fruits to feed the families, and we have a sustainability project called “Trees for Children.” Each year since 2008, we have planted 50 acres of a hardwood tree called Melia volkensii, which is indigenous to the area where the village is (the county of Kitui). So, we’re at stage eight at the moment, and we hope that by at least 2020, we will be able to start harvesting the trees, and finally, this program will be able to support the village. We also have plans to commercialize the farm.
The schools are Catholic schools, but we cater to children from all religious denominations. The village’s home and medical care is funded by the U.S. PEPFAR program. The primary and high school are funded by our U.K. board. The polytechnic is supported by the Italian board and Irish board. We have a second NGO in Ireland, and they look for funding for the polytechnic, but when the production unit grows sufficiently it will be able to fund the polytechnic. The sustainability program is funded by a U.S. donor. We have other big donors for the village; for example, Johnson & Johnson is one of the donors that developed the farm.
My name is Sister Mary Owens, and I am the executive director of the Children of God Relief Institute: Nyumbani (COGRI).
What are your responsibilities as executive director?
My responsibilities as the executive director are the oversight of all the programs and, in particular, I do that through the managers in the different programs. I am responsible for the policy of COGRI, namely the mission and vision. I also am involved in fundraising. [Founding director] Father [Angelo] D’Agostino was a very public figure in fundraising—not only in his own country, but also in the other countries where we have international boards, so I have continued that.
Can you describe how your experience here has been?
I’ve been here since 1991. I was fully committed to the vision and mission of Father D’Agostino, because I knew that these children, as Father D’Agostino would say, are the most marginalized in our world today. So it gave me great joy and honor to be able to reach out to these children, as we have over the last 25 years, and help them grow up like any other children: healthily and happily.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face?
Because Nyumbani is donor-funded, there is always the challenge of ensuring that the funds are there so that the programs can operate. Part of our vision and mission is our dependence on the providence of God, and that sustains me throughout. I’ve never experienced that God has let us down.
There is always the need to push the frontiers in this particular area we’re in, the world of HIV. Father D’Agostino, in his time, pushed for anti-retroviral medication for the children. He also pushed for access to free education. Previous Kenyan president [Mwai] Kibaki established free education in primary schools; but Father D’Agostino had to have the children take the government of Kenya to court in order to get that. It took some lobbying to get USAID on board, but he also managed that with the help of board members in the United States.
Another area that I have been lobbying is access to resistance testing. It became clear that we needed to have access to resistance testing because our children had been on anti-retroviral medication since the 2000s, and some of them were showing failure. So finally, with the help of donors, I managed to get a genetic analyzer, which tests for resistance. The cost of this is excessive, so I’m currently trying to lobby to get lower cost access, so we’ll also be able to make it available to the outside community.
This is one of the challenges of the developing world. The developed world believes—at least they act like they believe—that as long as we have basic help, the developing world is fine, which is not true. We should have quality healthcare, quality...whatever.
There is also a gross injustice of the stigma of persons living with HIV. It is simply a medical condition, and like any other medical condition, and it needs access for care and treatment. But stigmatizing it is totally unacceptable and unjust. Part of it appears to be connected with sexuality. Sexuality, as you know, is still taboo in certain parts of the world. HIV is associated with promiscuous sexuality. But it doesn’t matter how people got the virus; now that they have the virus, they need to get access to care and treatment, and need to be treated with dignity as an equal person and not stigmatized in society. Some children have inherited HIV and are living with it through no fault of their own. One of the greatest challenges is to prevent the transmission of the virus to children.
The other area that I’m aware of is that there’s still racial discrimination. There’s a mindset that I often come across in the developed world, which doesn’t see Africans as equal to Caucasian people, and this is often due to ignorance. I get asked: "Can Africans do that?" Which is totally uninformed, and of course also unjust. I come across this sometimes: "Oh, you’re doing that…in Africa?"
What are some of the biggest successes?
Our children are living! Our oldest is 34. Two of our children are in stable relationships, and they have children who are HIV-negative. They’re all going through tertiary-level education, so that they are empowered to look for employment and become self-reliant. As children grow up and become adults, they also advise parents; not that parents always accept the advice. So our older children are telling us: "Sister Mary, it’s better if you…" So that’s marvelous, because they feel they’re just like any other young person. That’s happening more and more, because there’s so many of them.
What is the most rewarding part of your position?
Assisting these babies, toddlers, young people, and adolescents to live full lives to fulfill God’s plan for them. Each one of them is a beautiful creation of God, and each has a vocation to develop and realize their full potential and thank God for their lives.
What do you think is the greatest impact of having such a wide variety of funding and donation sources?
When you’re donor-funded, you have to widen the horizon of where you get funding. We’re blessed that USAID funds us to the level that they do, since 1990. It gives us the chance to do more work, and also a means of creating awareness among people and properly informing them about what HIV is: it is simply a medical condition that can be contained, and young people living with it can still live full lives. So there is that element of informing the people and reducing the stigma.
Through the funding, you talk to so many different audiences about Nyumbani, so you can give them correct information. That’s one of the benefits of it. Meeting people from different parts of the world, and getting into their lives. But it is time consuming. Our attitude is: every donation matters, no matter how small or how big. It is the person who’s giving, and the generosity of that person is what is significant.
Can you give an overview of the fundraising at Nyumbani?
Nyumbani has multiple programs.
The first is Nyumbani Home for children living with HIV who were abandoned, and almost all are orphans. It opened in 1992, and currently we care for 123 children. A number of them are in boarding school, so during the school term they’re not here, and others who are in tertiary level education are out in hostels or other accommodations.
Nyumbani Home is donor-dependent. We have five international boards in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Ireland, and Spain. Nyumbani U.S. sends in a monthly contribution of $12,000, which goes to the Nyumbani Home. Nyumbani U.K. has a small number of sponsors for these children. Nyumbani Italy and Nyumbani Ireland have a larger number of sponsors for these children. We also have a laboratory, which began in 1998, and any profit from the laboratory goes to the support of Nyumbani Home. World Children’s Fund has been supporting us over the past 10 years, sending in a monthly contribution of 4,000 euros. Medicines for Humanity also sends us medicines for opportunistic infections. The U.S. government PEPFAR program covers all anti-retroviral medication for the children here. And because we are very centrally situated in Nairobi, and easily accessible, we have quite a number of visitors who come and bring donations. And more and more, the local Kenyan people are supporting Nyumbani Home.
The second program is Lea Toto, which means “bring up a child.” It was started in 1998, and now it has eight centers surrounding the city of Nairobi in the informal settlements, caring for 3,200 children, who live with a family member. We look after their holistic care other than accommodation. It is 80 percent funded by the U.S. government PEPFAR program. Holistic care includes food support for families who fall below the poverty line, and sometimes even rent. We have a respite center in Nyumbani Home for children who have become severely malnourished in the Lea Toto program, where we rehabilitate them and train the caregiver. The other 20 percent of support for the Lea Toto program comes from our Irish board and our U.K. board. And Medicines for Humanity provides funding for medicines. From the Kenyan government, we get the prophylaxis called Septrin.
Another program is Nyumbani Village, started in 2006. This is an outreach program for the two generations left behind to the HIV pandemic: grandparents whose children have passed away and are left to care for their biological grandchildren, and groups of children who have no parents and no grandparents and are living in child-headed households. We invite grandparents who are destitute and often aged to come into the Nyumbani Village with their biological grandchildren, and we ask them to also accept and care for children from child-headed households, to form a blended family of about ten children, headed by the grandparent. Currently we have 100 such families in residence, which is 1,000 children and 100 grandparents.
Nyumbani Village is a simulated village that has all the services that the grandparents and children need, including primary education, high school education, tertiary level education, technical training. Others go to other colleges and universities. Only about 4 percent of the children in the village are living with HIV. We have a clinic and a laboratory for their needs and for the needs of the other children and grandparents.
It is also open to the community. We have a farm where we grow vegetables and fruits to feed the families, and we have a sustainability project called “Trees for Children.” Each year since 2008, we have planted 50 acres of a hardwood tree called Melia volkensii, which is indigenous to the area where the village is (the county of Kitui). So, we’re at stage eight at the moment, and we hope that by at least 2020, we will be able to start harvesting the trees, and finally, this program will be able to support the village. We also have plans to commercialize the farm.
The schools are Catholic schools, but we cater to children from all religious denominations. The village’s home and medical care is funded by the U.S. PEPFAR program. The primary and high school are funded by our U.K. board. The polytechnic is supported by the Italian board and Irish board. We have a second NGO in Ireland, and they look for funding for the polytechnic, but when the production unit grows sufficiently it will be able to fund the polytechnic. The sustainability program is funded by a U.S. donor. We have other big donors for the village; for example, Johnson & Johnson is one of the donors that developed the farm.
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