Kenya: 9,000 Women Get Support from CREAW, CARE

By Development Diaries
August 13, 2021

The Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) has provided counselling service and social support to about 9,000 women-led households to cope with the fallout of Covid-19 in Kibera, Africa’s largest urban slum.

CREAW, with support from Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), has been implementing a tele-counselling social support programme that targets women and girls in the East African nation.

The counsellors target women and girls, who they say are more vulnerable to pandemic shocks than men because of fewer jobs and higher job losses.

Aid groups say Covid-19 has caused greater psychological and economical suffering to women compared to men, especially in developing countries including Kenya.

According to Lead Counsellor at CREAW, Nerea Akoth, women have been hit on multiple fronts by the pandemic.

‘With [Covid-19], a lot of things have happened, [we have] seen an economy that has gone down. [We have] seen jobs reduced. So, even the small jobs that are available for women is no longer there’, VOA quoted Akoth as saying.

‘Women are actually strained and they find themselves in tight situations. They have to provide, yet there are no job opportunities’.

Small business owner, Cynthia Okewe, said, ‘So many people have died and done so many things because of Covid-19’.

According to VOA, Okewe, who is a beautician, was full of hope when the business she opened four years ago started turning in profit.

But the Covid-19 pandemic slashed her income by more than 80 percent, making daily life a struggle and sending her into a deep slump.

‘…I got the counseling because I needed to understand myself and know and cope with the [Covid-19] and know [what is] going on around me so that I can cope well without hurting myself, because I got into depression because of [Covid-19]’, she said.

Programme Lead, Women’s Voice and Leadership Programme (GAC) at CARE Kenya, Dorothy Aseyo, said that despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the group had managed to help about 9,000 women.

‘The psycho-social aspect (of Covid-19) has come in very strongly because of the need of differentiated impacts of either [Covid-19] or any other issues that women and girls have been facing in Kenya’, Asyeo said.

‘This actually means that we need to support them to receive psycho-social support because of the mental health issues and also the other effects of Covid-19 on their health’.

The United Nations Covid-19 Gender Assessment report, released last December, found that nearly half of women-led households affected by Covid-19 need economic and social support.

Source: VOA