About us

This connection between us and the divine Consoler is to me of utmost importance. Faraja should totally rely on the ‘Helper’ that Jesus promised us and who will remain with us until the end (Jn.14, 16).
During the 1980s and 1990s, Fr. Peter was a member of St. Benedict’s Monastery, Thika Road (Ruaraka), next to Mathare Valley, and thus he not only worked with refugees, but with poor Kenyans, especially young people struggling to go through secondary education. For this purpose, he set up a scholarship programme for boys and girls of poor families.
One day he was asked to search for refugees in the city’s men’s and women’s prisons, at Nairobi Remand and Allocation Prison and Lang’ata Women’s Prison, and visiting them he realized how brutal and inhuman living conditions were in these punitive institutions. At once he applied for a prison chaplaincy, and within a week he was officially employed in this capacity, in December 1999. This new ministry became increasingly Faraja’s core project.
Still, in 1999, he bought a property in Nairobi South B, accommodated over a dozen young refugees, and sent them to the city for professional training of their own choice. This real estate called ‘Faraja Court’ eventually became Faraja’s headquarters. Slowly, but steadily, Faraja turned from a one-man undertaking into a highly professional charitable organization, Faraja, with social workers, psychological counselors, an ICT expert, and administrators.
Through this Voices Book, we would not only like to present to you a comprehensive picture of what Faraja does and stands for but also to introduce to you some of the faces who are a real testimony of the impact we have had in the society and the world at large. On the following pages, you will read from some of the many people who have benefitted from our Capacity Development Projects, Community Adaptation Projects, and Human Rights and Advocacy Projects. Looking ahead, the Foundation in its current strategic plan dispensation aspires to become a case-oriented capacity-building organization, focusing on the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders and children in conflict with the law.