About These Projects
We are focused on health and support to help transform communities.
We work in partnership with the community to improve access to life’s essentials, including education, medical care, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and transport.
Our vision is for empowered communities to have the knowledge, skills and resources that enable families to live in healthy home environments, where they are self-sufficient and thriving.
Country: Kenya
Impact To Date: In 2015 we created a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Health, Nakuru County, to support the New Canaan Health Clinic and provide essential services to the local community, based in the middle of what was an Internally Displaced person camp.
Fast forward to today, our project with the New Canaan Health Clinic has reached its Sustained Phase, with the overall health of the community significantly improved. There has been an evident reduction in childhood mortality and illness due to the immunisation program with family planning information helping to educate the next generation.
So They Can's project with New Canaan Health Clinic has reached its sustained phase, but we are proud to be supporting 2 more clinics, (Chesimirion Dispensary and Nakoko Health Centre in Baringo County, Kenya) to achieve the same outcomes for their local communities.
Project Goal: Improved health of community members, including students at program school, through provision of support to partner medical clinics to ensure they are well-resourced and able to provide quality health care services at the clinics and via mobile medical camps in hard-to-reach areas.
About: Data from 2018 shows that only 17 % of Kenyan households are covered by health insurance of any type, while the rest of the population relies either on donor aid, government funding or out of pocket spending for accessing health care. The Kenyan Health System is not able to deal effectively with the growing epidemics and the growing burden of chronic diseases.
So They Can works as a key partner with selected government clinics to ensure that communities are healthy, informed and able to take a proactive role in supporting the health and education of their children. Healthy children and communities have the best chance of thriving. Currently, government health services and supplies are not sufficient and even the basic, common, treatable ailments can result in fatalities. So They Can, through the Community Health and Development Project, aims to partner with the government to support access to safe, effective and quality essential health care services, including affordable essential medicines for all and to improve basic infrastructure at the community level.
About Chesirimion Dispensary: So They Can started supporting Chesirimion Dispensary in 2020. This is a level 2 public health facility situated in Tiaty sub county, Baringo County. It operates 8am-5pm Monday to Friday, and has a catchment area of approximately 36,000 people.
Since So They Can's intervention, the facility has increased its enrolment from an average of 5,000 patients per year to 7,000 patients per year.
Chesirimion Dispensary provides a number of essential services to the community, including diagnosis, treatment and medicine, emergency deliveries, immunisations, nutrition packs and antenatal care.
About Nakoko Health Centre: Nakoko Health Centre is a Ministry of Health basic health facility located in Silale administrative area, Tiaty East in Baringo County, with a catchment areas of approximately 22,000 people.
So They Can started supporting the health facility in January 2022 as part of the partnership with the Baringo County Government. Two of the biggest challenges were insufficient medicines and an underutilized maternity wing. This made the community to avoid the facility preferring to walk long distances to alternative better resourced health facilities and in most cases avoiding the health services altogether meaning conditions remained untreated.