ABOUT
ALFAJIRI.
Alfajiri (Swahili for daybreak) is a non-profit organization founded specifically for art creation. Alfajiri offers an art therapy-based outreach program and additional creative empowerment programs aimed at street children and at high-risk vulnerable children and youth, especially those living in the streets and slums of Nairobi, Kenya.
Alfajiri Street Kids Art is a registered community-based organization that was founded and is currently directed by Lenore Boyd, an artist and a volunteer who came to Kenya working with the missionaries of charity fathers. After some time experiencing the immense poverty of life in the slums of Nairobi, Lenore felt a movement of heart and soul to help children out of the streets to find better lives and brighter futures. It is clear to anyone who spends time with these street children that this is a life of overwhelming destitution, hunger, desperation and rejection that no one should have to endure.
In Kenya, there are an estimated 250,000 children living on the streets, and 60,000 within the city of Nairobi alone (United Nations data 2015). They are abandoned or forced to flee to the streets as a result of neglect and poverty within their families. Alfajiri prides itself on respecting, caring for, and nurturing street children through various art-based therapy programs. The organization strives to support these street kids by giving them a chance to create their own artwork and find their dignity. Their brilliant work has been exhibited in art galleries in Nairobi and eventually will be showcased around the world. The Alfajiri Street Kids are looking forward to sharing their thoughts, ideas, hopes, and dreams through their powerful artwork. In addition, Alfajiri aims to find these disadvantaged children safe places to go off of the streets with a loving and caring home while empowering them through sponsored education programs.
At Alfajiri Street Kids Art, we seek viable solutions. The Alfajiri kids are passionate about sharing their stories and artwork to begin their journey of healing and restoration. Through our unique art therapy programs, the talented street children of Nairobi can abandon their lives on the streets and aspire to be the brilliant, creative, empowered, and successful Kenyans that they truly are.
OUR MISSION.
To reach street children through art creation and discover our common humanity.
OUR VISION.
A world where street children discover and are given their true worth.
OUR
HISTORY.
Alfajiri Street Kids Art was founded in 2015 by Lenore Boyd, an Australian artist and volunteer who came to Kenya to work with the Missionary of Charity Fathers in the spirit of Mother Teresa. She has volunteered in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mexico, and now Kenya. She saw first hand the tremendous burden of the poor, and more specifically the homeless children living in the streets. One day, while walking through a rubbish dump accompanied by a priest of the Mother Teresa Fathers in
Nairobi, Kenya, a desperate street boy approached Lenore for help. Placing his shaking hands in hers, he pointed to the rubbish dump and said, “See this is where I sleep” and to a muddy puddle he stated, “This is where I drink. Help me. I want to go to school.” Lenore immediately responded and within a few months she personally sponsored the boy for primary school and helped him get back to his family. After seeing the intense need of so many street children and the simple act it took to fulfill one boy's hopes and dreams, Lenore personally rescued several other children. Then, together with other passionate young Kenyans, the inception of Alfajiri was seeded in 2015. As art was the background of Lenore’s family and a sure way of outreach, the organization established a mandate of reaching out to children in the streets and to those at high risk through art creation, thus giving them hope, stability, and sustainable futures through empowerment.
OUR PARTNERS.
