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PANDIPIERI is the
name of a Kisumu Shanty area. For the last twenty years it has also been
the name of a community based urban integrated development programme.
Its roots go back to 1977 when the Mill Hill Missionary Hans Burgman launched
it in the poorest areas of Kisumu. It got its definite form in 1979.
In that year a new team came together, and put up its domicile at Pandipieri,
under the protection of the Diocese of Kisumu. By the end of that year
it counted about ten people, half of them from the area, half expatriates.
The members, men and women, religious and lay, old and young, married
and single, adopted a simple lifestyle that was in harmony with that of
the other inhabitants, and formed a religious community inspired by a
simple understanding of the Gospel. The beneficiaries of the new projects
were to be all the inhabitants of the shanties of Nanga, Pandipieri, Nyalenda,
Manyatta and Nyawita, irrespective of race or faith. Pandipieri Centre
has been described as a "biotope of solidarity".
In the course of time the Pandipieri projects multiplied and grew. Currently
there are about 20 projects, carried by about 80 salaried workers and
hundreds of volunteers from the shanties. The Team is still the managerial
body; all the team members are heading one or more projects; thus a high
degree of integration of the various projects can be achieved. These projects
are grouped together under five headings: Community Based Services (Health
Services, Counselling Services, Streetchildren's Programme), Education
(Nursery Schools, Non-formal School, Study Libraries), Training (Girls'
Domestic Schools, Art School, Carpentry Training, Masonry Course), Income
Generating Activities (Savings and Credit Bank, Ambulance, Boutique, Textile
Production Unit, Plastic Recycling Industry, Carpentry Production Unit,
Pandigraphics Computer services), Community Support Groups (For the Poor,
For the Permanently Sick, For Pastoral Needs). The best known programmes
are the big Health Programme with its tremendous outreach in the fields
of malnourishment and AIDS related problems; the Streetchildren's Rehabilitation
Programme with the daily care for about 60 children; and the 4 Girls'
Domestic Schools with their two years' course of women's empowerment.
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