Kenya Justice Cafe

[Joseph Waweru]

Kenya Justice Café event Held on 21st November 2010 at St. Patrick Catholic Church Youth Hall at 3.00 pm

Brief Summary from the host.

This month’s café saw a bigger number of participants and the progress is amazing!
Host took members through the café etiquette.Participants observed that the previous café took a longer extension of the scheduled time and hope for time observation.
Two participants had logged on the website.

The café took two and half hours and issues were not discussed to exhaustion due to time.

Introduction

Justice Café is an initiative of IJPC with YIN being the host in Kenya
YIN has been working on various youth programs both in the Rural and Urban areas
The Host took participants through justice café guidelines.
One of the participants was asked to take the members through the checklist of the order and timelines of every activity.
The host read out the topic of discussion for the month of November, which was HIV/AIDS and Global Health.

Open Forum

Participants read alternately through the café reflection.

Participants Reaction

• Participants observed that it was hard to come to terms with the people infected world wide which amounted to thirty three (33) Million
• This figure is close to three quarters of Kenyan population.
• Youth infection rate with virus was also a matter of concern (50 % world wide) everyone was of the opinion that intervention was mandatory

How life would be affected if one is infected:

• Productivity would drop significantly
• Health care expense would go up
• Psychological and emotional trauma.

Participants were unanimous that accessing health care services was a challenge. Though the public health care providers had tried their best to make it accessible, there was an uphill task of overcoming the same in those facilities. Churches were not known to stigmatize the infected.
Process

Suggested interventions:

• Taking center stage in the fighting of the scourge by having personal initiatives towards the same
• No stigmatization to the infected as everyone is affected in one way or another.
• Initiation of poverty reduction strategies and initiatives since this would significantly reduce the rate of infection.

Concluding Remarks from participants

“Parents have a role to play in the fight especially in Africa where discussing with children about matters of sexuality is a taboo which is a big setback” Boniface Mungai

“If everyone appreciated that AIDS is not discriminatory, the fight would be a lot easier”
Wycliff Edgar

“If we believed that there is hope after HIV infection we would see the infected differently and with appreciation” Betty Ivy
“Testing for the Virus is as important as taking medication” Ken Njoroge

[Raphael Wanjaria Njararuhi]

Guys were worried on the HIV and Race relationships....??