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Pro Poor Tourism in Kenya, Charity Tours
and Philanthropy Safaris in Africa
Changing the face of
Poverty
Hallmark Adventure Safaris offers the traveler Reality Tours to the various
slum areas in Kenya. The purpose of these tours is to involve the traveler
in the ongoing activities in these areas of the city of Nairobi and Kisumu
where the vast majority of the poor live by getting them to view the poverty
situations and see also the difference that those who are working on changing
the lives of the people of the slums are making. These tours are also
called Pro Poor Tours because they are supposed to try and change the
situations of those in the slums the same way the publicizing of the Soweto
Slums in South Africa created awareness that made the world invest in
this slum, forever changing the face of Soweto.
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Africa has numerous slums and Kenya has
its fair share of this phenomenon that is a result of poverty driving
people from their rural homes to arrive in the urban centers seeking more
promising jobs only to land on the least paying jobs. To survive these
people have ended up in informal settlements that are unplanned without
basic amenities. Poverty is the unifying trait of these slums and Nairobi
in Kenya has the dubious distinction of hosting Kibera one of Africa's
largest slums with almost one million people. Apart from Kibera there
are many other slum areas in Nairobi such as Korogocho, Kawangware, Sinai,
Kiambiu.
A Tour of Kenya's
Slums
Hallmark Adventure Travel has come up with various tours that are, in
essence, Philanthropy Safaris that brings the traveler (through NGO's
and other organizations that are trying to improve the lives of these
slum dwellers) in contact with the people of these informal settlements.
Some of the tours and excursions in Nairobi include: -
- A visit to some of the women's groups in Kibera
- Interaction with some of the people addressing Aids
issues
- Visits to some of the needy informal schools that
tackle the plight of the physically challenged
- A tour of a number of youth projects in the slums
- A tour of a facility for orphans
- Interaction with some NGO's working in the slums
Pro Poor Tourism
in East Africa, Philanthropy Safaris
Hallmark Adventure Travel customizes these trips to the slums to cover
the areas of interest of the individual groups visiting and so it is important
to know in advance just what exactly you wish to see to enable us cater
for these interests. Please remember that these are Pro Poor Tours and
so each visit should have a positive effect on the people of the slums.
The aim of these visits is not to give handouts but to ensure that the
people in the slums have a share of the Tourism cake which is worth over
55 million dollars a year.
Local guides are contracted and groups
of slum dwellers have been brought together to register tourism based
communal associations that can earn directly from every visitor touring
the slums. The money that is earned by Hallmark Adventure Travel on these
tours is used to identify and help those projects that are in dire need
through the people and organizations that are already working to "change
the face of the slums."
Kenya Slum Tours, Kibera Slum Tours, Pro-poor Tourism in Kenya, Reality
Tours in Africa, Slum Tours in Kenya
Visit Kibera,
one of the largest slums in Africa
A visit to Kibera one of the largest slums in Africa playing host to almost
a million people. An informal settlement with no infrastructure that sprung
up in the place of a disused former quarry, Kibera is a personification
of the extreme poverty that is to be found in parts of Kenya. With most
of the people of Kibera living on less than one dollar a day making "ends
meet" on a daily basis is a gigantic task for the bread winners who
in a number of cases include children whose parents are either incapacitated
by Aids or orphans. Most slum families are large averaging about 8 people
housed in a tin shack that is about 10 square meters without basic facilities
such as water, light, toilets and washrooms. In these crowded facilities
disease plays havoc and yet the inhabitants of Kibera slums cannot afford
the cost of treatment in regular hospitals in spite of the fact that these
costs have come down considerably in recent times. The result is numerous
deaths that could be avoided especially of children and infants. These
two groups are usually the most vulnerable in the slums because of the
unhygienic environment in which they play with burst sewers, flying toilets,
unclean drinking water etc
A trickle in an
ocean of poverty in Kibera Slums
Numerous organizations have been established in Kibera to tackle these
challenges but because of the large numbers of inhabitants that need their
attention, their work is just a trickle in an ocean of poverty and any
assistance from any quota would be most welcome. Hallmark Adventure Travel
brings you in contact with a number of these organizations so that you
can experience their day to day work in the slums and identify the hardships
and challenges they face. Below is a sample tour of Kibera Slums: -
The Face of Poverty, Kibera Slum Tour
- Half Day - HATS 221
The tour commences at 9am and you are picked from
your Nairobi Hotel and driven through some of Nairobi's Upmarket estates
so that you can see the contrast between the wealthy and the poor staying
within 5 to 10 kilometer away from one another. Your Kibera guides have
already arrived and the security arrangements for the slum visit have
already been set in place. We use the formal local security apparatus
of the slum which is run by people who live in the slums and these are
people with a rapport with the slum inhabitants aware of the daily happenings
in the slum. We arrive in the slum at 9.45am to start our tour on foot
of this expansive slum.
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