Caritas Kenya is the development and social arm of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Kenya. It runs various social development programmes through the following approaches;

Advocacy

This aims at promoting Research, Lobbying and Advocacy as a strategy towards achieving political, economic and social change for quality improvement of peoples’ lives. This program uses various methods of conducting researches for getting of the qualitative analysis of a situation required to form informational advocacy platform. Advocacy is another component of this program. Data collection and information gathering and dissemination are paramount for the success of this Programme.

Capacity building

Caritas Kenya as a development and social services commission of the Kenya Episcopal Conference has a role to ensure that the capacities of Catholic Church-based development structures are strengthened, so as to respond to the needs of the poor more effectively.

Livelihoods

The livelihoods project activities seek to address the need to facilitate prudent implementation of poverty reduction programmes in the country in the following areas:
  • Food security.
  • Microfinance initiative.
  • Farming &alternative (non-farm) livelihoods.
  • Environment and climate change.
  • Water and sanitation Humanitarian interventions
Kenya’s disaster profile is dominated by cyclical phenomenon including drought, famine and floods. These occurrences disrupt people’s livelihoods, destroy the infrastructure, divert planned use of resources, interrupt economic activities and retard development. Others which are recurrent include fire, terrorism, technological accidents, diseases and epidemics. Through Programmes, Caritas Kenya coordinates emergency activities while at the same time integrates long term development in a bid to build mitigation capacities for disaster prevention. The overall goal is to establish and maintain an efficient, effective and coordinated system for managing disasters in order to minimize losses and resulting disruptions and destructions of people’s life and livelihoods, infrastructure, economy and degradation of the environment.

Gender and Development

Caritas Kenya strives to promote advancement and integral human development for all in the social political cultural and religious spheres in line with social justice and in witness to the Gospel of Christ. Other programmes within Caritas Kenya are Humanitarian Assistance, Livelihoods, and Advocacy.

  • To improve the status of men and women through training and awareness creation.
  • In liaison with Diocesan Coordinators assist the self help groups with specialized
  • Embark on gender sensitization activities to promote Gender awareness and integration of Gender concerns in development.
  • In liaison with the Diocesan Coordinators, work with marginalized communities for restoration of human rights and dignity.