Where We Work
Goal4.org works in the rural community of Sega, Kenya, a cluster of 18 villages with a population of about 10,000 located in the far western region of the country.
Kenya’s western region is poor, hard to reach, and has limited health services and educational opportunities. Most people rely on subsistence farming to feed their families and earn a small income to buy essentials like cooking oil, salt, soap, and kerosene to light their homes at night and to pay for essential services like school fees and medical care.
The mortality rate of children under five, newborns, and their mothers in this region is twice as high as the national average.
The Coronavirus has added another burden. Like many other African countries, Kenya has so far escaped the worst health effects of COVID-19, but the economic effects have cut deep. The World Bank predicts the virus will push an additional 23 million into poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. At the same time, aid organizations are finding themselves with less funding and are having to scale down or sometimes even entirely shut down programs that are so badly needed.
Goal4.org programs have been able to continue through the pandemic largely because they are locally run by a small staff, a large group of active, community volunteers, and donors who have continued to give through this challenging time. Together we’ve been able to continue bringing hope and change to mothers and children here in Sega.
See the biographies of our Sega Advisory Board to learn about their dedication to community service and their hopes for the future.
Janerose is a trained Community Health Volunteer, a counsellor, and a farmer. She joined the Sega health volunteer team in 1988 and is currently responsible for 134 households, going door-to-door with health education and support aimed at preventing common illnesses.
Monica Akinyi Odongo is the head of Sega’s public health facility, Sega Dispensary. She is a registered nurse whose broad responsibilities at the Dispensary include administration of the facility, managing the staff, and treating patients.
Rabin is the nursing officer in charge Sega Dispensary, the only public (free) health facility in Sega. He manages the facility, coordinates all health services, sees patients, and is responsible for community health. He was recruited to Sega to help develop and grow the Dispensary’s maternity service, including promoting the service to mothers in the community. In his past job, at a similar small, rural dispensary, he did just that – improved the maternity services and influenced a shift in the number of women who give birth at the health facility rather than at home. He is a skilled mentor, manager, and communicator.
Albert has worked in education throughout his professional career. He began as a classroom teacher, later rose to the position of headmaster, then Approved Graduate Teacher. He went on to become an inspector of schools in Uganda and Kenya. He was born and raised in western Kenya where now, in retirement, he dedicates his time and skills to supporting local schools and community organizations.
Colm is a technical project manager on Google’s robotics team. Throughout his career, he has specialized in large-scale, multi-national telecommunications projects, in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. At Inveneo, a non-profit social enterprise that delivers low-powered networks to rural Africa, Colm participated in the post-earthquake response effort in Haiti, supporting the field team as they set up emergency communications for first-responders in the field. Prior to a decade managing non-profit projects, Colm managed global telecommunications projects for Ericsson in Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Botswana, Macau, Canada, and the USA. He helped establish Ericsson’s US presence, building the technical support organization and managing the build-out of Ericsson’s US network.
