Kenya Frequently Asked Questions

Many regions of Kenya rely on rain for their water supply. People in remote villages often walk miles to fetch unclean water from rivers. But when the rains don’t come, the land dries up, and even dirty water is no longer available. During prolonged periods of heat and no rain, drought can become dangerous for many who live in Kenya. Crops and animals die. People’s source of food and income are suddenly gone.

Operation Blessing helps provide clean water solutions to the people in Kenya. In the Gongo community, villagers often walked more than three miles to fetch water from the nearest river. The water was untreated and contaminated. Operation Blessing came alongside of them to bring water directly to the village. The new system filtered and treated the water for bacteria, making it safe for the people to drink.

People in Kenya who lack access to clean water often have to spend valuable time walking to and from the nearest source of water. Children miss school to help their families get the water they need to survive, and they often get sick from drinking that water. With no access or way to afford medical care, some could even die from drinking unclean water.

Without easy access to clean water, people who live in remote villages in Kenya often walk miles to and from the nearest source of water. This journey takes time away from tending their crops or seeking work. Sickness from drinking unclean water also leads to time away from earning the money needed to purchase food for their families. Extended drought or illness exhausts their resources. Water issues become hunger issues. They don’t have the resources saved to feed their children. Entire families go hungry. When water is scarce for extended periods of time through drought, crops and livestock can’t survive from excessive thirst. With no food available, even for purchase, famine can consume entire communities.

Years ago, the people in the Kimana village of Kenya had no access to clean water. The community struggled with poverty. And without a local school, their children were unable to overcome the generational challenges. Operation Blessing worked with the community to build a local school and provide a source of clean water to the school and the entire community. Families finally had enough water for themselves and their agricultural program. The holistic approach to both clean water and hunger issues is helping them thrive.

Another example is Magdalina. At 82, this grandmother cared for her five grandchildren, but she struggled to provide for their most basic needs like food, shelter, and water. Operation Blessing not only built her a sturdy house, but also provided her with a rain catchment system with a filter that would provide clean drinking water right outside the house. The storage tank was also large enough to provide the whole family with water when the rains did not come.

Operation Blessing addresses both immediate and prolonged hunger needs and food insecurity in Kenya. During periods of drought, we supply food to people facing famine and hunger in Kenya as well as other countries throughout the Horn of Africa.

Our programs are also designed to help prevent hunger more proactively. We train and assist Kenyans with microenterprise and livestock programs that help them produce food that they can both consume and sell to raise additional income for their families.

Our urban gardening initiatives also help relieve hunger and offer food insecurity solutions in Kenya. Operation Blessing helped residents of the Mukuru slum cultivate and manage sack gardens to grow food, even in the confines of a highly populated city like Nairobi.

Our educational programs also address hunger relief and food insecurity. We train young people in schools with the skills they need to earn a better living and avoid income shortages, food insecurity, and poverty in the future.

In early 2022, the country experienced a severe rainfall deficit, creating a dire situation for many regions throughout the county country. By late July, the nation was experiencing a severe drought. Prices for food and fuel soared. (1)

Operation Blessing has worked in Kenya for many years. As the situation worsened, we sought to provide both short-term and long-term relief for the families suffering in the hardest hit areas of the country. Thanks to our compassionate partners, we were able to provide emergency food relief to hungry families across Kenya! 

Many things cause both hunger and food insecurity in Kenya. A natural disaster like a drought starts a cycle of poverty and for some, famine. When drought engulfed parts of rural Kenya, vegetation and water became scarce. Animals died. Many who depended on herding or livestock for their livelihood began to suffer.

The food supply and potential income from the sale of livestock was greatly reduced. As the drought persisted, flocks dwindled. Rural Kenyans had to use savings and ultimately credit to buy food and basic needs. Once those resources ran out, many Kenyans simply went hungry.

In this case, a natural disaster started with food insecurity and culminated in serious hunger and famine. But this is not the only cause of hunger. Poverty increases when opportunities, education, and even capital are not available. Without these resources, many Kenyans fell into dire circumstances that led to hunger. This cycle often repeats itself from generation to generation unless it is addressed.

Drought is a natural disaster that directly causes hunger in Kenya. Without rain or a natural source of water, people struggle with much more than finding a source of adequate water for themselves and their families. Vegetation cannot grow without water. Livestock have nothing to eat. Without water, both people and animals face dehydration and malnourishment.

Without the livestock, some Kenyans lose their only means of income. They must spend what little money they have for food. The situation worsens as hungry and thirsty livestock simply starve to death. Their financial resources are quickly depleted as the drought persists. They have no food. They lack water. Now, they lack the means to buy either. The Kenyan people have no choice but to go hungry.

Millions around the world face food insecurity. Many people have resources and food but lack access to adequate quantities of nutritious food. Sometimes, they simply have no financial resources to break the cycle of poverty that has spanned many generations.

To address food insecurity in Kenya, Operation Blessing’s programs provide both short-term and long-term hunger relief. In Kenya, we distributed food to meet the immediate hunger needs of its residents. During the drought crisis in Kenya, this food was essential to so many who were going hungry.

To help prevent potential food insecurity and hunger problems in the future, Operation Blessing offered training and resources to help prevent Kenyans from falling into this poverty cycle. We supported programs to help Kenyan children get the schooling they needed and offered solutions to the problems that got in the way of their education. We have also provided hygiene products to young girls who often missed school because they could not afford the appropriate products that would enable them to attend regularly.

Sack gardens are a simple innovative way to garden in tight spaces. Sacks are filled with fertile arable soil that can easily grow crops. Since sacks take very little space, people can grow food just about anywhere. They also help by requiring less water than deep soil. They simply need a little water and sunlight. The sacks are easy to use and can be transported just about anywhere.

Sack gardens enable people in highly urbanized areas to grow food and prevent food insecurity. Even those who do not have access to land can use sack gardens to supplement their family’s food supply. This highly valuable tool provides added security for Kenyan families who may not always have access to nutritious food.

Entrepreneurial or microenterprise programs in Kenya attack the root causes of food insecurity. Lack of education, capital, and skills training all contribute to the cycle of poverty that leads to food insecurity and hunger issues. Operation Blessing’s agricultural program has proven to be highly effective.

This program helps Kenyans use farming to provide both food and income for their families. Through the program, one young mother named Mosoni learned how to raise and care for goats. She now has the ability to sell milk in the marketplace to earn income that can help her provide for her family during difficult times.

Operation Blessing programs have had a big impact in the lives of everyday Kenyans struggling with hunger issues. Kadzo is a single mother in Kenya, who relied on goats and crops to feed her family and earn income. When the drought in Kenya destroyed them along with her livelihood, Operation Blessing provided enough emergency food supplies to feed her family for an entire month!

Dora is another single mother and grandmother who struggles to break the cycle of poverty in her family. But with no education, she simply could not get a job. Operation Blessing provided Dora with a house and a plot of land along with enough seeds and supplies so that she could grow food for her hungry family.

Education empowers both boys and girls in Kenya to rise above the problems that trigger food insecurity. Proper training prepares young adults for better jobs that provide money to purchase food during difficult times.

Children in remote areas of Kenya often have no access to schools or getting to a school is dangerous. That was the case with the children of Loitokitok. At one time, they had to walk miles though areas with dangerous animals to even get to a school. Parents often kept their young children at home. Operation Blessing built a school right there in their community, so children could get the education that they needed to overcome food insecurity in their villages. Their children were also provided two meals a day while at the school, which took the financial burden off of their parents.

Operation Blessing has been involved in a number of disaster relief efforts in Kenya. The biggest has been providing relief for a devastating drought that has ravaged many parts of Kenya. This help has come in the form of hunger relief to help Kenyan families who have lost their livelihood and are struggling to survive. Operation Blessing has also provided disaster relief efforts after landslides and floods in Kenya.

During periods of extended drought, mothers like Nempaso go days without any food at all. In the village of Arapal in northern Kenya, she often sent her children to bed with just a cup of water. When Nempaso and her neighbors received the emergency food supplies from Operation Blessing, it meant that they would have food in their bellies for the next month.

When the rainy season begins, the ground cannot absorb the torrents fast enough. Floods and landslides devastate many communities, wiping out everything they have. Victims are often unreachable, even by humanitarian organizations. In the city of Pokot, Operation Blessing worked with partners on the ground to supply blankets, mosquito nets, solar lamps, and clean water sources to residents who were unable to return to their homes. The supplies helped them get through the difficult days ahead while families figured out the next steps to take.

Many people living in rural villages throughout Kenya don’t have access to or cannot afford basic medical care. Operation Blessing steps in with medical prevention and assistance where it is needed most. We provide surgeries to Kenyans who are sick, injured, or struggling with life-altering deformities and don’t have the finances to pay for the surgeries themselves. We are able to train residents in health and hygiene practices as well as provide school-age girls with the feminine hygiene products they need to stay in school. And when Kenyan people have faced dangerous outbreaks of diseases like malaria, we have introduced prevention initiatives and treatment to stop the spread.

Malaria prevention programs exist to treat, control, and eliminate the dangerous and deadly disease, malaria. These initiatives often target mosquitos that carry the disease. With nearly half the world at risk, programs focus on the most vulnerable regions—where children and pregnant women experience a high mortality rate.(2)  

Malaria outbreaks often become dangerous and even deadly in Kenya. One way that Operation Blessing helps prevent malaria is through partner organizations. In the community of Baringo, we partnered with a local church to distribute more than 1,000 mosquito nets and 2,000 jars of mosquito repellent to help protect families from mosquitos that carry malaria in Kenya.

Life-Changing Surgeries is an Operation Blessing program that provides medical procedures to people with debilitating health conditions in regions without access to health care. Many villages in Kenya are remote, and medical clinics are often many miles away. Residents often cannot afford treatment or surgery. Operation Blessing connects those in dire need of surgery with people who have the heart and ability to help them. Many individuals in Kenya have the hope of a new future today thanks to a life-changing surgery. 

Lewis was just 2 years old when his mother noticed a small swelling in his abdomen. She took him to a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia, but as a single mother of three children, she could not afford to pay for the surgery. As Lewis got older, the pain he experienced worsened. Operation Blessing was able to get him the surgery he needed through our life-changing surgery program. Today his hernia has been repaired.

Another patient, Chepogh, was milking a camel when a stick injured her right eye. A mother and farmer in a remote village of Baringo County, she only had enough money to purchase pain killers. Left untreated, she lost vision in the eye and could not continue to work her farm. Through the life-changing surgeries program, Operation Blessing was able to provide the surgical treatment she needed to restore the vision in her right eye!

Young girls in Kenya often miss school and get behind in their studies because they cannot afford or do not have access to proper hygiene supplies. Feminine products are a luxury for families struggling to put food on the table. Operation Blessing supplied a year’s worth of feminine hygiene products to school girls who live in regions where supplies are scarce or unaffordable. These products keep girls healthy and in school.