From: People For Peace
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News

REGIONAL NEWS TEAM
NAIROBI-KENYA
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012

On my own behalf (Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ) and Regional News Team, People for Peace in Africa staff, I would like to congratulate Rev Fr John Webootsa, a Consolata Missionary for having been awarded Peace Prize for having devoted his life to help improve the living conditions of slum dwellers in Nairobi’s Korogocho and Dandora settlements.

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Father Webootsa has been named the inaugural winner of the Franco-German Human Rights Award. In August 2011 he set up kitty fund that has so far disbursed micro-loans of Sh20, 000 each to more than 300 people, mostly women and youth to set up small businesses such as groceries, hair salons and kiosks.

According to Business News the community business start-up fund is funded by Concern Worldwide, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and the German Catholic Organisation and is aimed at providing alternatives to vulnerable groups not to engage in social ills such as drug abuse, criminal activities and prostitution.

The Mombasa-born priest is also involved in an environmental project dubbed Stop Dumping Death on Us which successfully lobbied the City Council of Nairobi to immediately decommission the three decade old Dandora dump site and its transfer to a non-residential area where only non-recyclable waste will be dumped.

Father Webootsa is only 37 year-old and not even Monsignor yet but has been honoured for his multiple community based projects that include setting up a communal kitty to advance micro-loans as capital to women and youth to set up small businesses, establishing a primary school and a medical dispensary to educate and provide healthcare to the community in Korogocho.

We also extend our gratitude to the French and German embassies in Kenya for their motivation meant to reward outstanding persons who are involved in programs that help empower grassroots and marginalised communities attain a better quality of life as well as promote social justice.

It is indeed gives Father Webootsa the will to soldier on as he looks forward to helping the slum dwellers even further.

According to the report the awards jury was composed of both the French and German envoys to Kenya, legislator Gitobu Imanyara, veteran journalist Hassan Kulundu of the Kenya Editors’ Guild, chairperson of the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) Tecla Namachanja, former chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights commissioner and the late Mrs Mary Onyango who was the deputy chair of the National Commission on Integration and Cohesion.

“Father John is very determined and has a strong will. He has been mugged five times but he never thought of quitting his job in Korogocho. His commitment to the people of Korogocho is selfless,” reads the citation from the jury.

Father John helped set up St. John’s Nursery and Informal School which provides education opportunities to 850 pupils who only pay Sh250 as school fees per month, but three quarters of the learners are on full scholarship as their parents cannot afford the subsidised fees.

The clergyman has also been vocal on the subject of extra judicial killings, speaking out against the dumping of murder victims at the Dandora dumpsite where he says they retrieved about 25 bodies in 2007/2008.

Ordained in June 2002 after his priesthood studies at Kenya’s Consolata Seminary, Uganda Martyrs Seminary, Namugongo, and finally in Lima, Peru; he thereafter moved to work as a priest at St John’s Church in Korogocho parish where he founded Kutoka Network, a voluntary initiative of 26 slum based parishes and interested parties who work with communities living in various informal settlements in Nairobi.

He first visited Korogocho in 1993 and was touched by the conditions there. While studying in Peru, he volunteered in Phorrilloa, a big slum in the capital Lima. His heart has always been to work to uplift people in the slums.

The non-monetary award comes with a one week fully paid up trip to France and Germany to meet stakeholders and institutions operating in the field of human rights such as the European Court for Human Rights and the German Institute for Human Rights.

People for Peace in Africa (PPA)
P O Box 14877
Nairobi
00800, Westlands
Kenya

Tel +254-7350-14559/+254-722-623-578
E-mail- ppa@africaonline.co.ke
omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Website: www.peopleforpeaceafrica.org