Ndugu Mdogo was founded in 2006 to help rehabilitate street children from Nairobi's largest slum, Kibera. Inspired by a desire to give hope to children without proper parental care, the programme seeks to cultivate the personal growth of the former street children by developing participatory solutions with them, consequently promoting the rights of all children.
The programme runs two initiatives; a home at Kerarapon and a Drop-in Centre at Kibera.

Ndugu Mdogo Home

The Ndugu Mdogo home is located just a few kilometers from Kibera at Kerarapon, off Ngong Road (between Karen and Ngong Town). The home offers a permanent shelter and a hospitable environment for the most vulnerable children.
Three Kenyan couples, with children of their own, also live at the home, forming a community in which each family takes care of twelve children as if they were their own. This gives the former street children a chance to experience the love and care of a real family.
The children gain access to basic needs and medical services, along with the chance to achieve self awareness and a proper formation. They get to play, explore their talents and attend a nearby public school, while a team at the home guides their growth step by step, all the way from academic progress to the reestablishment of links with their relatives. This ensures that their rehabilitation is complete by the time they are ready to be reintegrated into society.

Ndugu Mdogo Drop-In Centre

The Drop-In Centre started in September 2005 and is an initiative at the Kibera slum, where our social workers initiate the rehabilitation process through street activities. Operating from a small house in the slum, the social workers identify children living on the street, and organize street activities with them as a prelude to a fostering process that gradually moulds them into sound members of the society.

After achieving rapport with the children, the social workers take them through a programme that offers hope through the provision of basic needs, counseling, talent development, formation and self-understanding.
The Drop-In Centre seeks to achieve the following aims:

1. To promote street interventions and youth empowerment programmes
2. To support child rescue initiatives
3. To provide in-house care, support and rehabilitation of children in need
4. To initiate effective community and parent empowerment systems
5. To network and create awareness on street problems and the rights of children

The Centre also provides a base for academic research on street life, which is carried out with support from various universities.

The Drop-In Centre Calendar

The Ndugu Mdogo Drop-In centre targets to rehabilitate 20 street children per year. The one year programme is split into five stages as set forth below:

January: The street initiative begins. Social workers go out into the streets to identify children for rehabilitation.

Naturally, the street children initially display apathy to the social workers' overtures. This means the workers always have to devise ways to reach out to theses children and gradually befriend them, which they do over a period of about one month.

February: The social workers endeavour to deepen their newfound bond with the identified children by engaging in various street activities with them. For example, they play football with the children and invite them to visit the Drop-In Centre, where they can watch television, prepare meals and eat together. The social workers sometimes even spend nights on the street with the children.

Through this close interaction, the social workers get to know each child's case history. They find out the child's origin and try to understand the circumstances that drove him to a life on the street. Most often, the child experienced hostile conditions either at home or at school, and opted for the streets as a way to escape from the unfriendly environment.
Counselling starts informally on the streets through participatory engagement.

March: The social workers visit the children's homes of origin. Incidentally, most of the children actually have parents or guardians, but seek to escape from certain unfriendly situations. These visits give the workers an actual glimpse of the real reason for the child's sojourn on the street, which may vary from abject poverty to abuse by alcoholic parents or guardians among other possible reasons.

During these visits, the workers reach out to the parents in view of the child's rehabilitation. Where the parents or guardians have personal problems that strain their relationship with the child, the social workers try to counsel them into supporting the child's rehabilitation process as much as they can.

April: The children are formally inducted into the Drop-In Centre's rehabilitation programme. Although the extensive programme is largely informal, the inherent activities are systematically scheduled. They include the following:

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  Group Activities such as scouting, camping and talent development, which ingrain in them such qualities as discipline, leadership, teamwork and environmental consciousness;


• Informal education, which prepares the children for placement into the formal school system;


• Guidance & counseling, both in form of group sharing & individual counseling;


• Spiritual activities, notably Bible Studies.

December: This month marks the end of the rehabilitation programme. Where possible, the child is reintegrated back into the family at this point. In cases where further fostering is required, the child is either considered for admission to the main Ndugu Mdogo Home at Kerarapon or referred to another rehabilitation centre.

Emergency and Medical Assistance

Out of sharing and experiencing street life, the Centre responds to emergencies resulting from street violence, disease, exploitation and drugs-related issues. The Centre can accommodate up to ten children for emergencies like sickness, abuse by adults and immediate danger.
Street Youth Empowerment

The Drop-in Centre also supports initiatives to empower street youth using available resources in recycling and conservation of the environment. This project makes use of their acquired life skill, resulting in the setting up of a recycling unit for plastics, alongside other useful activities in support of environmental conservation