Updates from TRLF : Student Education and Youth Programs

I bring greetings from  the Tana Delta. In the last few months I’ve experienced issues with the Whatsapp account linked to my mobile number from Kenya. As a result I have created a WhatsApp account using my Malaysia mobile line +60 12 467 3040. Moving forward updates from Tana River Life Foundation will be sent from this number. Kindly add this number into your mobile address book if you wish to continue receiving updates on the foundation via WhatsApp broadcasts. I am now in Singapore and will be here till early June. I forward to meeting with you during this time.

Do let me know if you are able to meet. I am also contactable at +65-98338401 or gabrielteo@yahoo.com.

I am attaching some highlights on our work with students and youth in the Tana Delta as well as our progress in building a Student and Youth Hostel including Guest Quarters. They are available for download here :

• Students and Youth
• Hostel and Guest House

Finally please note that we will not appeal for any kind of financial assistance, emergency or otherwise, using Whatsapp chat. Kindly do not entertain any such requests you may receive from this chat. God bless.

Sincerely,
Gabriel Teo

Whatsapp / Telegram : +60 12-467 3040

Email : gabrielteo@yahoo.com

TRLF PayNow QR Code^* If you feel compelled to contribute to our relief effort, please use our QR code above. If you are unable to access it, please contact Gabriel Teo.

Tana River Life Foundation wishes you a Happy and Blessed New Year 2024

Dear Friends,

Thank you once again, be blessed as we start the new year and hope to meet you soon. I am  sharing with you a link to an article on my personal journey written by Jie Ying of NTU. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/alumni/alumni-stories-news/detail/trading-suits-for-smiles

Happy and Blessed New Year 2024.

Sincerely,

Gabriel Teo Kian Chong

Whatsapp / Telegram : +254723521774

Email : gabrielteo@yahoo.com

¹TRLF PayNow QR Code

1. Your generosity will directly contribute to our cause, and we appreciate your willingness to support us. If you encounter any challenges accessing the QR code, please do not hesitate to reach out to Gabriel Teo for prompt assistance. ↩︎

Emergency Flood Relief Program

I wish you and your loved ones much joy and abundant blessings this Christmas 2023. Our students and youth also prepared a Christmas greeting to thank you for your kind support.

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  Handraku village was completely submerged

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  60 households from Darga and 49 from Bura Moyo were displaced.

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  Meeting with elders of Kikomo Village

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  576 households from Garden West ward are living in makeshift tents

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  576 households from 7 villages from Dumi have been submerged or marooned

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  Children from 85 households from Peponi Village have been displaced

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  Meeting with the Headman of Mitapani villages

I have also prepared a brief report on an emergency flood relief programme we carried out last week. 

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  TRLF distributes flood relief supplies

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As the flood waters recede, and with sufficient funds, we will continue assisting affected communities with quality seeds in January 2024, and in this way ensure food security for the greater part of 2024 for many households. Thank you once again and may God bless you. 

Sincerely,

Gabriel Teo

Whatsapp / Telegram : +254723521774

Email : gabrielteo@yahoo.com

_{TRLF PayNow QR Code^* If you feel compelled to contribute to our relief effort, please use our QR code above. If you are unable to access it, please contact Gabriel Teo.}

Update from Gabriel – Nov 2023

Dear friends

I hope this short note finds you and families well. My sincere apologies for not writing sooner. As is always the case, we came back to a very busy six months since we returned to Kenya in June. It is only now that schools have closed that we are able to attend to long overdue reports. We prepared 7 photo collages which may be viewed here in high resolution.

• Furniture for Schools
• Transporting the Furniture
• Shipping the Furniture to Kenya
• Introducing TRLF Abodes
• Improving Infrastructure of Tan Delta Schools
• Life Vests for School Children
• TRLF Formation Programs

In addition we also prepared two short videos. The first video is a thanksgiving message from our fully sponsored secondary school students to our donors.

You may also turn on captions and set the video quality to HD for a better viewing experience.

The second video shows our students and youth in their fish pond where they rear tilapia and catfish for home consumption as well as to generate some income to supplement our meals. First harvest is expected in January 2024.

TRLF Youth rearing fish for food and income

We now have seven weeks remaining to our closure for the year on 21st December. Now that the academic year has ended, we intend to use this time to make much progress on the Hostel building, although the rains started yesterday and it may hamper progress. We also plan to use this time to carry out repairs at the community centre and school, like painting works and furniture repairs. As is our practice, all repairs and upkeep doing the school holidays are carried out by our students, youth and interns in return for them to receive some allowance to provide for their families at Christmas.

The youth will also use this lull to work on their farm projects, which includes vegetable farming, aquaculture and bee keeping projects.

This year our youth developed two income generating projects on a small scale, namely pressing moringa seeds for oil, and concrete brick making. We hope these projects can be developed in time to be sustainable local income generating projects.

Finally, here is the link to our 2022 Audited Financial Statements.

We end here with apologies once again for the delay is writing this, and wish each one of you much blessings as we head towards the end of the year. God bless.

Gabriel Teo and all TRLF beneficiaries,

Idsowe Village, Tana Delta, Kenya

Communal Living and Youth Formation Programs

Dear Friends

At the outset, I would like to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to all of you who have taken the time to meet with me and my student Salati during my first trip to Singapore. Your continued support and help are very much appreciated. I am now back in Singapore for a second stay until 20^th May 2023 and look forward to meeting up with more of you.

Allow me to provide you a brief update on two of our programmes – both of which are aimed at empowering our students and youth with more than just academic opportunities. The Communal Living and Youth Formation programmes also build character and nurture good values, while developing skills and competencies of the young people being assisted.

Communal Living for secondary school students and youth volunteers

The TRLF Community in Idsowe has grown over the years. We now have 55 fully sponsored secondary school students living together with 15 youth volunteers, for whom I act as guardian.

The TRLF Hostel to permanently house the Idsowe Community is under construction and is scheduled for completion by December 2023. The Hostel will also house the guest rooms for visitors.

Over the years, the older youth and students living at the TRLF community home in Idsowe have matured to become responsible mentors and role models. This has enabled us to increase the number of students we can accept into our community each year.

Youth Formation Programme

In January 2023, we welcomed 15 youth to this 2-year full-time live-in formation programme, which provides the path to full tertiary level sponsorship commencing January 2025.

Besides the different skills they learn from their varied tasks, e.g. house management, catering, financial literacy and project management, the youth also internalize values and good work ethics, such as diligence, focus, planning, target-setting and time management. They also learn how to engage respectfully and empathize with the communities we assist, crossing barriers of tribe and religion.

In carrying out their income generating projects, such as vegetable farming, livestock keeping, fish farming, bee-keeping and moringa oil production, the youth are encouraged to blend ancient wisdom with new knowledge.

The exposure they get from all these tasks helps them to learn how to give adequate and just responses to difficulties and challenges faced by communities around them, while sensitizing them to the importance of maximizing the impact of donor funds.

At the end of the day, the formation they receive helps the youth become more complete persons, maturing into capable and caring young men and women who are able and willing to look after, and to look out for those who come after them.

Aside from these programs, the foundation supports secondary school students through two other programmes, i.e. General Bursaries and Tana Delta Merit Scholarships. We will be sending out a separate report on the Secondary School Programmes.

Your kind support enables us to carry out all these works and we thank you. God bless.

Gabriel Teo Kian Chong

Singapore, 20^th May 2023

Whatsapp / Telegram : +254723521774

Email : gabrielteo@yahoo.com

Easter Message from Gabriel

Jambo! (Swahili for Hello!) to all our friends from all of us here in Tana River. I am very happy to inform you that I plan to visit Malaysia and Singapore again in June and July together with one or two of our youth. It’s been a long absence and I am so looking forward to seeing all of you once again. Dates are being finalized and I will send them out as soon as they are confirmed.

Dear friends, although we will NOT be organizing any collection of Mitumba (used clothes/shoes etc) this year; we will be making a special appeal for used school furniture for which our village schools here in Tana Delta are in dire need of.

Specifically, we are appealing for:

(1) Classroom desks and chairs,

(2) Metal cabinets,

(3) Canteen tables and benches and

(4) Teacher’s tables.

One of Tana River Life Foundation’s (TRLF) core tenets is in education, both academic as well as in values formation. This is our key method in realizing our stated objectives of building individual lives and thereby entire communities.

Today, TRLF is a major development partner of the Tana Delta Sub County Education Department in Kenya, helping to provide quality, affordable education for many reaching even the most rural villages. We assist all the 72 public primary schools and 17 public secondary schools in the Delta. The furniture that we receive and ship to Tana Delta goes to help furnish these public schools.

I am accompanying this short note with some photos portraying our recent activities. We hope to have our annual report ready for distribution by the middle of the year. Thank you once again for journeying with us, and to all our Christian friends, we wish you the hope and great joy of the Easter resurrection.

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May God continue to bless and protect us all.

Gabriel Teo
16th April, 2022

Click here if you’d like to download the letter to forward to your friends.

2020 Updates from TRLF

Dear Friends

Warm greetings from the Tana Delta in Kenya. I hope this message finds you and your families safe. It is a challenging time for all, and from here in Tana, we continue to be united with you in prayers. Kenya started reporting cases of Covid-19 recently, with closures and curfews nationwide, although there are no cases reported here in Tana Delta to date.

I was to leave for Asia by mid-April, but have postponed my trip indefinitely. As such, we will NOT be having a Mitumba collection this year. However, if we are able to travel later this year, we hope to proceed with our collection of school furniture and study aids.

Grade 6 pupils from Onwardei Primary School gladly transporting classroom chairs from Singapore to their school across the River Tana using a traditional dugout canoe.

Since we are not likely to meet anytime soon, I have prepared two reports to give an insight into what we were able to do with your support last year.
 
Please click here for the 2019 Tana River Life Foundation Annual Report. 
If you are reading this on a mobile phone or on any low bandwidth platform, you may access the compressed version here.
 
For details on the 2019 Tana River Life Foundation Activities and Achievements, please click here. 
If you are reading this on a mobile phone or on any low bandwidth platform, you may access the compressed version here.
 
On behalf of the many young people and their families, and entire communities here in Tana Delta, that have benefited in one way or another from your assistance last year, we thank you very much.

We hope you will continue to journey with us in 2020, as we strive to build lives of greater dignity, freedom and integrity for many.

May God bless and protect you and your families.

Gabriel Teo Kian Chong
15^th April 2020

P/S : Please add gabrielteo@tanariverlifefoundation.org to your address book so that our emails will not be blocked by your Spam filter.

If you received this email from a friend who is a supporter of our foundation, and would like to receive emails directly from us, please sign up here.

TRLF Mitumba 2016

Dear friends

I hope this note finds you and your families well.

I am now tying up matters over here in Tana as I prepare to make my trip to Asia at the end of March. It has been extra hectic because of the on-going construction of the new school ( Emmaus Centre Project Phase 1) which restarted late last year and also because we expanded our bursary programme to assist students from Term 1, especially those who performed well in the primary school leaving exams and were not able to continue to secondary school because of financial limitations. Thank you very much once again for your support for our work here in Tana Delta.

I expect to be at my mum’s place in JB by 1st April and in Singapore by the evening of 3rd April. I hope we can meet up sometime in April or May. I will be in Singapore the whole of April and again in the last two weeks of May. I will be in Malaysia during the first two weeks of May as well as the first two weeks of June before returning to Kenya by mid-June.

We will have our Mitumba Project collections again this year from 8 – 16 April at Nativity Church Kindergarten, the same venue as last year. Collection details and wishlist are available for download here.

• Collection details : https://tanariverlife.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/mitumba-project-flyer-2016-short.pdf
• Wishlist : https://tanariverlife.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/2016-mtb-request-list.pdf

In the last year, together with a few volunteer friends from Singapore and Malaysia, we registered Tana River Life Foundation Pte Ltd. One of its activities is the sale of Kenyan handicrafts in Singapore & Malaysia, with all profits going to support TRLF projects in Kenya. Soapstone carvings featuring safari animals and Christmas figurines have been the first products. If you would like to view or find out more, please contact Iris Tay at tanariverlifefoundation@gmail.com.

When in Asia, I will be contactable at +65-98338401 (Singapore) / +6012-6237040 (Malaysia) or Whatsapp to +254723521774. I look forward to meeting you during our time in Asia.

Until then, may God bless you and your families.

5^th March 2016
‘Like’ us on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/tanariverlifefoundation/
Follow our blog : https://tanariverlife.wordpress.com/

Happy New Year from the Tana Delta – a note from Gabriel

Dear Friends

I pray that you and your loved ones are well, and wish all of you a belated Christmas and a very Happy New Year 2016. May God bless you with grace, joy, peace and inner strength in the year ahead.

It has been really hot over here in Tana for the entire month of December, despite the heavy rains. Thankfully the weather has cooled down this week and we are hoping that the hottest period has passed. The river broke its banks as a result of the heavy rains upcountry and some villages along the Tana River were flooded. Our village was not affected though our farm and many others along the river were flooded causing some loss of crops. Nevertheless, it was not as bad as we were expecting with all the dire predictions of El Nino in the press since September.

We continued extending our reach to the most interior villages this year, giving a lot of students opportunities they would otherwise not have. We managed to organize the first Tana Delta Secondary School Debate sanctioned by the Ministry of Education. We held it at Kitere Secondary School, the most remote school in the Delta. The entire school comprises a single building with 3 classrooms, one of which is used as staff room cum principal’s room cum store.

Kitere Secondary School is situated in Ndera Location. It is the most remote secondary school in the Tana Delta

It takes two hours to get there during the dry season and even longer during the rains, if at all the roads are passable. Normally such events are held in schools situated closer to the tarmac road, and at most just a few student representatives from the interior schools are able to travel to attend such functions due to lack of means.

Every debate participant received a dictionary donated by St. Theresa’s Convent in Singapore

Holding the event at Kitere Secondary School gave that entire school population a truly unforgettable experience. It also enabled students from the less remote areas who participated in the debate to appreciate the challenges students in the remote areas face.

TRLF – improving Literacy Skills in the Tana Delta

Our school, Delta Mustard Seed Academy had an enrolment of over 150 students this year. Our children are able to read from the time they are 5 years old, whereas the norm in the Delta has always been that kids even as old as 9 struggle to read simple words. We would like to assist more children develop in this way and have identified 6 primary schools in the most outlying locations for special assistance. We are developing a program together with the school teachers from these schools for implementation in 2016.

School Building under construction; Community Centre in the background

Work restarted on construction of the school building of the Emmaus Centre Project (ECP) in late November. The delay was because the contractor Mr. Li was tying up another project in Ethiopia and was unable to release his site manager until mid-November. The site manager Mr Yang is a very skilled and dedicated builder and his service is worth the wait. He undertook the community centre construction and completed that with utmost professionalism and much passion. The school is expected to be completed by May 2016.

The community centre building is complete with the exception of the internet connection. We are working on getting the external works completed, i.e. waste disposal, water supply and storage etc. All such works are expected to be completed by mid-2016.

TRLF youth, Nancy and Esther explaining the use of reusable sanitary napkins to students from Kitere

We continue nurturing our youth, both at secondary school level as well as post-secondary level, helping them form and internalize moral values. We also involve them in all the community work we do so that they become more integrated in the real lives of their own communities and neighbours. Many of them mature to become more passionate and aware of the needs of others and of their responsibilities to assist.

TRLF donated desks, chairs and textbooks to Oda, Buyani and Kitere secondary schools in 2015

As we leave the gift of 2015 behind, and look forward in wonder and faith to 2016, I thank you very much for journeying with us as we build individual lives, and thereby entire communities. You are remembered in our prayers today and I ask that you too keep us in yours. Once again, Happy New Year 2016, be blessed.

Idsowe Village – Tana Delta, Kenya
1^st January 2016

Reaching out to Schools in Singapore

Gabriel and team were invited to his alma mater Raffles Institution on 16th April as part of Heartware 2014, organized by the Community Advocates of the school.

He spoke on the work of the foundation and helped Rafflesians understand how their efforts in collecting used shoes contribute to the community in Idsowe, Kenya through the Mitumba project.

Here’s an extract of the article by Joyce Er, Marcus Tan, Christine Saw and Martin Lim :

That same day, a talk was also held to help establish the right attitude towards the final instalment of Heartware, Feel It! No Shoes Day. Over the past two years, this has been held alongside the Shoe Collection Drive that CA holds in partnership with the Tana River Life Foundation (TRLF). This is a charitable organisation situated in Kenya, which aims to provide dignified aid to marginalised locals. The talk was conducted by Rafflesian alumnus and TRLF founder, Mr Gabriel Teo, about his organisation’s schemes and the ethics he believes should underpin any acts of social service. He was accompanied by three Kenyan youth beneficiaries of TRLF’s programmes, including the Mitumba Project which the Heartware shoe collection drive is contributing towards.

Mr Teo began with a preamble on the principles underpinning his work. He warned against heroism and ‘creating dependency’ or a culture of slacktivism, which he characterised as ‘playing with people’s lives for your own ego’. Passionately decrying shortsighted, one-off welfare projects that fail to prioritise human lives, he said, “Community is understanding that it is not about output or numbers you generate, it’s about outcomes, and how are lives changed for the better.”
After touching on schemes geared towards subsidizing education for Delta students, Mr Teo provided detailed information about the Mitumba Project, which is behind Heartware’s Shoe Collection Drive. Mitumba, or ‘recycled goods’ in Swahili, is a microfinance scheme set up in 2004 and one of TRLF’s entrepreneurship courses. In addition to shoes, Mitumba also collects clothes and bags, which are then sorted and either sold or used for the course.
The microloan scheme, essentially a form of repackaged financial assistance, operates over 4-5 months. In the first month, 100 pieces of clothing and 20-30 pairs of shoes are loaned on good faith to interview-selected applicants, mostly women with dependents such as children studying in secondary school or with chronic disease. Participants market and sell their wares to locals for about 400-500% profit. The sale of all their shoe stock, with a pair going for approximately $4.20, can pay for about a term’s school fees. In the subsequent months, they repay their loans and purchase more stock to sell. Participants must remain accountable, presenting monthly receipts accounting for their income and expenditure.

In response to a question about the sustainability of a scheme in which TRLF still provided the shoe stock, Mr Teo clarified that Mitumba ‘is not intended to be a major source of assistance’, and practically only ‘gives them a boost’. The real intention, Mr Teo stressed, was to ‘preserve dignity as you assist, through dignified giving and dignified receiving’, as opposed to a condescending ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ attitude on this end, or a sense of passive dependence on the other.
Since the overwhelming majority of students in attendance were CA members or Councillors, the outreach for this talk was admittedly seriously limited. This was unfortunate, as the talk did have important messages to share. Especially in light of Acta Non Verba, those in attendance found the talk useful in clarifying exactly how the Mitumba project works, and understood TRLF’s guiding mindsets of aid with dignity in relation to No Shoes Day. Lum Qian Wei, a Y5 member of CA, succinctly summed up her takeaways, “I found it useful. The TRLF emphasises self-reliance and preserves the dignity of the beneficiaries as ultimately, beneficiaries have to put in their own effort to run the businesses. I think No Shoes Day serves to remind us how fortunate we are, and helps us empathise with the poor; this ties in nicely with the TRLF’s principle of treating everyone with respect regardless of his background or status, and not slipping into condescension.”

The complete article is available on http://rafflespress.com/2014/04/27/wareming-hearts-heartware-2014/