Delaware Kenya Association’s Hope Award for Community Service honors individuals and groups for their commitment to improving the quality of health, addressing social justice issues and empowering Africans locally, nationally and globally.

Awarded annually at the Dining for a Cause event starting with the 3rd annual event on November 18th, 2006, this award’s goal is to celebrate development work by individuals and groups in Africa that is in line with the mission of the Delaware Kenya Association, and which impacts villages and brings hope.

Inaugural Hope Award for Community Service Honorees

Keiyo Soy Ministries (KSM)

Based in United States, Keiyo Soy Ministries’ goals include providing clean drinking water, providing an emergency vehicle, establishing health care clinics, providing Bibles, Christian materials, and Sunday School materials, assisting in training young pastors, and equipping the national pastors and church leaders to minister to their own people.

Keiyo Soy Ministries was awarded the Hope Award for Community Service for its development work in Kenya, and specifically for its Katumoi Water Project that will complete a gravity based water distribution system to provide fresh clean water to the Keiyo Valley region of northern Kenya.

When completed, the Katumoi Water Project will impact the community in various ways including: growing food crops even in periods of drought, providing a fresh clean ongoing source of water, empowering the community to help themselves, empowering the community to establish a stable environment, freeing the children from searching for water to attend school, decreasing the severity and frequency of water borne diseases.

Harambee in Progess (HIP)

Established in 1999, HIP is a volunteer organization that provides people of all races with a forum to network, exchange ideas and resources to help alleviate and break the cycle of poverty in the inner cities and in rural Africa

HIP’s projects in Kenya and U.S. are in three main areas: churches, education and health. The goals include helping to reduce the distance the people walk to the church, the elementary school and health center from 10 to less than 5 miles in the village of Katolo, providing short-term relief to Kiganda Health Clinic and Kinanira Center for the Handicapped, and Awasi Health Clinic and Katolo Dispensary health centers in Burundi and Kenya respectively.

Harambee in Progress was awarded the Hope Award for Community Service for its work in the areas of providing access to education and healthcare in the places the organization serves.