KAP (Kitale Community Advancement Programme (KAP))

Kitale Community Advancement Programme (KAP) is a community education and counselling programme working in Trans Nzoia County/Kenya, which aims to mitigate the impact of societal breakdown especially violence, trauma, addictions, HIV/AIDS risky behaviours and environmental degradation. Its activities focus on capacity-building voluntary community resource persons, providing a variety of (group) counselling- and psycho-education services whilst also planning to provide trainings for a fee.

Originally started and run by the Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM) in 1993 as ‘Kitale AIDS Programme’, in December 2009 the programme was registered as a national Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) separate from the Catholic Church. Whilst implementing its HIV preventive activities the urgent need to address major underlying and related societal problems became apparent.
This lead to efforts towards re-branding. In April 2017 KAP is finalizing its process for name change with relevant Kenyan Authorities: from ‘Kitale AIDS Programme (KAP)’ to ‘Kitale Community Advancement Programme (KAP)’.

KAP’s main objective is “To facilitate, promote and create innovative and sustainable educational and counselling approaches to mitigate the impact of societal breakdown, especially violence, abuse, trauma, addictions, HIV/AIDS and related problems and environmental degradation”.
Its main areas of interest are (A) Trauma Management, Prevention and Peace, (B ) Addiction Prevention, Community-Based Treatment & Referral, (C) HIV/AIDS Behaviour Interventions and (D) Comprehensive Recovery for Extra Vulnerable Youths. Care for the environment is integrated in all components.
KAP sees societal cohesion, community ownership, personal responsibility, true commitment and therefore true voluntarism as vital prerequisites for healing and defeating violence, trauma, addiction, HIV and restoring environmental damage. KAP’s work is based on a strong and practical spirituality with an ecumenical and interfaith character.

Between 2002 - 2016 KAP trained and followed-up 3,885 volunteers with 70% still active 8 months after training with at least 1 activity per week. KAP has 14 staffs and 25 community trainers.

KAP’s activities show to impact people deeply and lead to sincere efforts towards healing, peace and addiction-free and/or safe(r) behaviours. These include reduction of participants’ risky, violent or disruptive relationships and addictions, improved communication with partners and others, addressing of different sorts of stigma, ethnic imbalance and reconciliation between warring parties, and also increase in Voluntary HIV Counseling and Testing, -treatment and addressing of (the many) STIs, use of medical (HIV) treatment and preventive tools. Participants say that they are much helped by KAP’s psychological counseling sessions. Usually these concern extremely difficult domestic situations of neglect, loneliness, violence, (gang) rapes, including of young children, and broken families and relationships.