Now I Believe that God is ALive

Last month was a month full of blessings, Dress Africa got to reach out to Rambira children's home sheltering 9 children, donated clothes and celebrated a meal together with them. It was a blessing to be part of spiritual journey with vulnerable people in a society full of needs to be addressed.

Our partnership with other organizations is proving to impact more lives and changes we are seeing on the ground in Kenya can only be said to be testimonies in believers ears. 

We are going to bless two ladies with a shelter through the support of the Volunteers in Missions organization. 

Yunia is a lady in her late 60s living with her 4 grand children in the tin-shark structure shown below, which has put her and her family through a lot of suffering in bad weather conditions. The worst of all comes during perennial rains and floods that sweep through homes and houses. She has continued holding onto hope knowing that one day she will get a better shelter and this week marks a dream come true. 

Our team of volunteers started work at her place on Tuesday and by Friday the house was up. The images below shows the different stages of the project as they wrap up the work at Yunia's place. One of these new structures costs $350 and can help change a family's life forever. 

"I have witnessed a miracle and now I believe that God is Alive. I did not know that I could be blessed this much by God but after seeing what Dress Africa has done, I want to give thanks to God and everybody who took part in blessing my family with a house. Our life has changed from today." Yunia said.

We ask you to join us in prayers as we work towards changing, empowering and giving hope to people in most marginalized parts of Africa. 

Dress Africa Scaling Success on Grids of Hapiness

Did you know that Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has introduced a Minister for Happiness to gain a greater understanding of the ‘gross national happiness?' Did you also know that Last year UK Prime Minister David Cameron published the country’s first ever Happiness Index that will help scale national satisfaction of its citizens? There is a paradigm shift on definition of success where society satisfaction and happiness is now scaled on top more than profits or revenues earned.

For a not-for-profit organization like Dress Africa which focuses on the value we create and add on the lives of marginalized communities in Africa, happiness has been our long term definition of success as people's satisfaction is what we are for. By improving life standards with our new entrepreneurial ideas and community development projects, the change we are creating on ground is more important not only to us but to all our stakeholders.

How do we Achieve Mass Happiness?

You will agree with us when we say that teaching people how to fish is no-longer helpful, It has become a pun that has yielded less since most NPOs started using it. Now that people have been taught how to fish, we also need to know that they need a water body nearby otherwise their fishing skills are all in vain. Dress Africa as an organization is here to provide them with opportunities to fish through our new entrepreneurial ideas as well as through our micro finance program that is opening employment gates to many.

We support farmers using our micro loan program. An example of how we change lives can be seen on the attached video above of a farmer celebrating with his community the bounty harvest they got. This is how we measure our success; by looking at the value we create on the ground and how our stakeholders are satisfied by opportunities we offer.

With this program, Dress Africa has introduced nutrition program in the most rural parts of Kenya with a goal of seeing children living a healthy life from the fresh produce they harvest on their farms.

We are fighting diseases such as Osteoporosis, Scurvy, anemia, malnutrition etc using basic organic farming. Join us in building healthy, happy and satisfied societies in Africa. For only $1 you can make somebody earn more than two dollars a day and above all draw a family closer to God.

Change, Give Hope & Empower

Dress Africa is dedicated towards changing lives, empowering people and creating hope through new entrepreneurial opportunities that we create. We work with marginalized communities in Kenya supporting Health, Education, firming, community development projects, evangelism through business churches as well as partnering with local and overseas ministries.

Our new business model fit in these communities and includes a bread bakery oven that can employ up to three people and can support three families and change their lives. These businesses are also acting as center points for bible studies and discipleship to both customers and its employees with a weekly prayer meeting and morning devotions.



This cost effective bread oven (Shown in the image above) goes for $187.50 and can be used to bake bread, cookies, special events cakes, among other snacks.

With $187.50, you can positively impact 3 families of roughly 7 people each who lives on less than $1 a day, you can directly give hope to almost 20 people, you can open a gospel leeway to more than 500 people who are using the products, You can support our ministry partners by feeding them but above all feeding Gods people with the bread of life

"Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty," (John 6:35 NIV).

Pray for our projects, our partner ministries, the marginalized people we work with and churches in Kenya.

Rural Development Floating on Water

Nyando is a county in Nyanza province (Kenya) with a population of 299,930 people. Its urban population is reported to be 10,055 people.

Kenya is among the world’s 30 poorest countries ranked 152 out of 177 countries on the 2006 Human Development Index (UNICEF ) in the poverty line. Nyanza province in Western Part of Kenya where our organization Dress Africa is operating is considered one of the most poorest provinces out of 8 provinces in Kenya with infant mortality rate of 206 per 1,000 live births in Nyanza Province (UNICEF). Out of an estimated 2.4 million orphans and vulnerable children in need of care and support, about 1.2 million are believed to be due to rising HIV/AIDS mortality. (UNICEF).

UNICEF reports puts Kenyans living below poverty line at 46% of its total population. This figure contributes to almost half of the population leaving on less than a dollar a day.
Nyanza has lately been ranked among the most poorest provinces in Kenya with the leading HIV AIDS pandemic at 15.3% This means that Nyanza is leading with death tolls due to HIV/AIDS infection and there is an ever bulging orphan rates that has been the root cause of poverty in this region.

Nyanza is prone to Malaria, a disease that claims lives in as short as 48 hours. Malaria kills a child somewhere in the world every 30 seconds. It infects 350-500 million people each year, killing 1 million, mostly children in Africa (UNICEF). Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds and the majority of these children die within 48 hours of the onset of illness. Most malaria infections are caused by infection with Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. (UNICEF)reports.

Nyando county is also prone to perennial floods that leaves hundreds of people homeless, internally displaced and to some extremes deaths have been reported. The floods are always followed by chains of challenges such as water bone diseases, Cholera, typhoid, Malaria, lack of infrastructure, homelessness, which triggers other extended challenges such as dropping out of school and loss of jobs.
Over the last two months, Dress Africa has supported in prayers and through basic needs Nyando people during floods that was caused by extended March-April rains. We would like to cordially thank all our supporters who prayed with us and above all who worked with us through your generous contributions. Special thanks to churches that we have partnered with and for the evangelical work that you are doing in this place.

For more of our monthly reports and breaking news from Kenya, you can subscribe to this blog or inbox us at jokello46@gmail.com and we will send you monthly updates from our organization.

D. Africa.

Replacing Wealth Redistribution

Replacing Wealth Redistribution with a Vibrant New Theory


I will argue that redistribution of wealth is ineffective and a moribund theory that has failed to solve global poverty and needs to be replaced by a new and effective principle. Mostly the theory has been attacked but attackers have failed to give a solution to the problem in question. I am going to introduce a principle that can replace effectively the theory of wealth redistribution that “states that there is unlimited (NOT INFINITE) amount of wealth that can be created using scarce resources in a given time as long as one factor of production is met.”

For the new theory to be true there are assumptions that needs to be made:

1. That wealth redistribution can be successful if and only if the world has reached a plateau of wealth creation hence poor people can only rely on the wealthy to improve their life standards.
2. There is scarce resources that can support worlds population by producing unlimited amount of wealth.
3. Historically, human being (source of labour) which contributes to ⅓ of factors of production has been inventing and innovating new technology to support the worlds population and will forever be repeating the same.
4. There is no limit or maximum amount of wealth that can be produced over a given time

The desirability of wealth redistribution has been debated for so long on bases of ethics and economic grounds. The debates however have failed to give an hypothesis and the new theory I am building is going to give a rationale, objective, means and policy effectiveness on reaching a tentative solution to the global poverty.

Based on Christian morals as its ground of effectiveness, my theory goes above all the hurdles of ethics that has been tied to wealth redistribution such as dishonesty, corruption, deception, dirty politics exeterra, and focuses on both individual person as well as global economic ways that can put poverty to a halt. In case of any external attacks from non theistic worldview holders, the idea is resting upon ethical and moral standards which are accepted across all disciplines and in all worldviews. There is no given time and way that any of the above listed vices can be applauded unless our faculties have been corrupted.

“We may define wealth of a nation as the total amount of economically relevant public and private assets including physical (natural), financial, human, and social capital.” In this definition, all the three factors of production are listed and that is what the new theory puts into consideration when it talks of wealth redistribution. Factors of Production.

“Creation of wealth include the production of public and private assets which indicate important but limited role of the market and price mechanism. ” “Wealth creation includes both spiritual and material side, and goes beyond a mere acquisition of accumulation of wealth.” And that is where faith and hope comes in to create positive change in lives of the people. Wealth redistribution in this stage should also be supported by morals and economic ethics but the attempt if any has been futile.

In 1848, Karl Marx wrote, “From each according to his ability, To each according to his need.” This can be said to be the foundation of wealth redistribution. In any new economic idea, it must be given at least ten years to see its fruits. From 1848 to date means that wealth redistribution has stayed with us for almost 165 years. If it was an effective and productive principle then equality in terms of wealth redistribution could have been achieved. There is nothing beneficial in this theory apart from appealing to authority of its founder Karl Marx. It is until we do an overhaul of this theory and replace it with a more accepted by all principle that poverty in the world can be addressed. However it is better to first look at some of the reasons why wealth redistribution was started.

““Income redistribution.” reviews the argument that voters support the use of government as the principal support agent of income and wealth redistribution in order to internalize free riding externalities that impact adversely on the effectiveness of private charity.” This means that politicians hold the mandate to share and distribute equally income from the wealthy to the poor. The poor in return have all their hopes in government that their dream of ending poverty will one day come true.

““Helping the poor.” calls attention to the handicapped faced by most poor individuals in the marketplace for income transfers.” This is brought about by lack of what it takes to elevate oneself to higher economic ranks and that is why the theory was formed to help them climb the ladder of wealth from their poverty.
All the above reasons are for a greater good of improving life standards and drawing equality though people in power have embraced it to appeal to peoples emotions yet there are no fruits that has been seen ever since the idea was started 165 years ago. This therefore begs the question and shifts the burden of proof to leaders who embrace the idea but change nothing with it.

It is unfortunate that economics and politics work together even though in my opinion both should work independently. The fact that they work together has raised ethical and moral questions as one party uses the others platform to elevate themselves, a fact that can be said to usurp the ethics of the other. These two can be beneficial to all if they work in line trying to figure out what suits the people and what needs to be addressed first and all the hypotheses implemented.

It can therefore be stated that due to lack of this ethical standards of operations, leaders who suggest this idea benefit more using the idea of wealth redistribution than the final people on the grassroots who need help the most. People’s needs are directly proportional to leaders benefiting out of the idea of wealth redistribution. The higher the peoples needs, the greater the chances that a leader will use wealth redistribution to campaign and the higher the chances of them benefiting out of it than it needs to benefit the poor.

What we need to understand is that there is a dichotomy in expectation under wealth redistribution policy. One party is enthusiastically waiting for a change lets call this party “the voters interests” while the other party be “power interest.” This is also where deception comes in as the power interested team deceive voters of a better future that they know they cannot implement. Once voted and in power, the leader tends to implement less of their blue prints making voters be the victims of deception.

“In the real world, voters frequently are much more interested in one issue than the other: housing, taxation, freedom, overseas aid, etc.” Due to this, politicians always move to consider minority and satisfy their needs instead of a greater mass due to complexity of the challenges and demands of the public.

In the power interets party, every step taken is either in hesitation of the future expectations or total delay of implementations of the manifesto for a longer term in office. “This analysis of the politicians tactics indicates simply that he is attempting to be re-elected to office, not that he is attempting to maximize the public interest.” To paraphrase from Martin Luther King, “justice delayed is justice denied,” the poor or the have-nots are being denied their rights and justice because at first wealth redistribution is not their idea. To fail to deliver a promise is to act immorally and unethically especially if lives can be claimed because of poverty yet nobody is willing to act faithfully as agreed.

Poverty cannot just leave but it must be fought to the end. It is logical to say that wealth redistribution has failed to satisfy its needs or reasons why it was started therefore a better proactive theory needs to replace it or else poverty will continue to live with us forever. To fight poverty, new entrepreneurial ideas must be put in place and sustainability must be put in the forefront in combating poverty. It therefore follows to me that the wealth redistribution has failed the ethics tests and cannot be used in ethical decision making towards ending poverty.


NEW THEORY

From this point onward, I am going to give strictly my views on how to fight poverty using the assumptions that I came up with which are practical and I expect majority if not all to agree with them. “there is unlimited amount of wealth that can be created using scarce resources as long as one factor of production is met.”With this, we do not need wealth redistribution since everybody will be empowered to create their own wealth.

Wealth redistribution can be successful if and only if the world has reached a plateau of wealth creation hence poor people can only rely on the wealthy to improve their life standards. We can all agree that the world has not reach its maximum or stagnation point of wealth creation. This is due to new resource fountains that are being discovered day by day. In this case we can include mineral mining and precious stones lying under the worlds bedrocks both discovered and undiscovered.

To generally classify all minerals as raw materials for production, we can easily say that the available raw material in every sector is enough to create employment to current population of the world that is estimated to be “6.9737 Billion people.” If we include other activities such as fishing farming and rendered services that are paying then we do not have any right to talk of poverty.

Every docket listed above can generate unlimited amount of both public and private wealth to cater for the world population without hitting a total plateau. Therefore to talk of wealth redistribution, we need to first hit the plateau where no wealth can be produced whatsoever and the only way to acquire wealth is if the rich or haves share equally what they have with the have-nots. So long as the have-nots can be empowered to generate their own wealth publicly or privately then the new principle of wealth generation can be applauded.

There is scarce resources that can support worlds population by producing unlimited amount of wealth. Economic wise, it is wise to always talk of resources as scarce which I fully agree with in this new theory being developed. Given the scarcity of these resources then, it is advisable to maximize the utility of every single resource at our disposal. To gain the full utility per resource, we can always think of ways to recycle every single by product that we get from it and form a chain of production of different products from the original raw material. If done in more than one stage we can be assured of producing unlimited amount of wealth both public and privately owned.

If we look at all the resources that are put into daily use, recycle all the wastes and out of all that, we get at least a half of its byproduct that can be processed to make something totally new, we can double the total amount of wealth produced daily if we get more than currently employed people to work and if we also do recycling of products that can make unlimited amount of wealth. Some people may argue that this will increase the overhead cost but to look at it literally; World bank defines extreme poverty as “ living on less than US$1.25 (PPP) per day,” If people are empowered to work in a day, either in their own businesses or farms, they can make more than a dollar a day and if they are hired by companies and other businesses they can earn more than that. Canadian minimum wage is roughly C $1 and other countries might have it lower than that. Relatively speaking therefore, with all the available resources that are their on earth, nobody should be living on less than a dollar a day.

Just as other resources are scarce, human labour also needs to be treated equally and fairly as a valued resource therefore nobody should be exploited. The minimum wage rule must be maintained to give people on the lower parts of economic pyramid a chance to grow. Even though minimum wage varies from one country to the other, it is something that has been economically tested that it can support a living and alleviate poverty.
Historically, human being (source of labour) which contributes to 1/4 of factors of production has been inventing and innovating new technology to support the worlds population and will forever be repeating the same. If human labour has and will remain developing in terms of skills, competency, accuracy and efficiency, human beings can produce unlimited amount of wealth with the scarce resources.

Since there are only four factors of production, that is land, capital, labour and entrepreneurship, a healthy human being contributes already to 1/4 of the factor of production which can also be used as a scale to measure wealth. With a 1/4 of wealth at hand, if these people are empowered, they can easily get capital and be wealth creators which automatically shifts their position from poor to wealthy. Human labour of all sorts contributes as a 1/4 of factors of production either skilled or unskilled so long as their effort counts towards the amount of capital put for an entrepreneurship. Under this, we can conclude that all are wealthy with existence of any human being who is spiritually, physically and mentally stable, since all they need to do is to recreate or multiply the wealth they already have.

Incase one is wondering why spirituality is counted as a key factor to getting wealthy, it is because we all have worldviews. None of these worldviews can tolerate poverty and that is why alms and charities are given by all. In my view as a Christian, it is useless to create wealth only to squander it on things that are of no value.
There is no limit or maximum amount of wealth that can be produced over a given time. This premise that support my new theory is based on infinite wealth creation at a given time. Even though goals can be set on how much or how many things to produce or have or attain, this is not a limit that cannot be crossed. An example is a company that raises its sales target yearly and some sells men go beyond the target. If the so called poor people know about this, then they can work and create more wealth. Since this new theory of wealth generation is guided by moral and work ethics, it respects and obeys rights of all employees therefore does not give chances of exploitation of human labour.

Governments do not create wealth, wealth is created by private sector and corporate businesses, therefore if governments talk of wealth redistribution then they should elaborate further how wealth redistribution is effective but as far as I know, nobody wealthy is willing to get his wealth redistributed by government unwillingly to the power. Can governments then teach the public on better and efficient ways of wealth creation?


By Josh Okello

Tried and True Poverty Eradication

Tried and True Poverty Eradication

Can Whealth Re-distribution Work?

It is not unfamiliar term in the tongues of most politicians,social activists, and people who run for different power positions depending on the systems they operate in. Questions that ring in my mind are, Can wealth re-distribution help in solving poverty issues? Is there a constant amount of wealth that can neither grow nor get reduced with time? How are factors of production contributing towards striking an equilibrium in the distribution of resources? What are some of the historical mistakes that we keep repeating that have propelled poverty to what it is in the 21st century? Can we talk of poverty as a national/international issue or just break it down to individuals at length a family but more basically a family member? If wealth redistribution has failed, what else do we have? Or are we running out of options? How can the post millennium goals help us in improving life standards of the people.

As philosopher Machiavelli puts it, "Never has anything great achieved without danger." It is that time that the word "poverty" must be done away with as it is a hopeless word that undercuts peoples potentials towards becoming economically stable. That is why there has been debates after debates on weather to talk of "third world countries, poor countries, countries in the east, developing countries etc." A name plays a lot in ones status and future expectations in prosperity. A lawyer whom we share names with once told me that if you cant live by the standards of your name then you better change it to something that suits you best. Any moment you brand a person as poor, they will live to the standards of poverty never aiming at getting out of it. Reasons: there is an automatic inequality that comes with it, there is a power imbalance and inferiority complex that develops and these are some of the characters of failure in life that can not help but worsen the economic situations of a person. So how is power and wealth redistribution tie to into all these? First, there are major assumptions that must be made when we talk of wealth redistribution. one of the assumption is that the world has hit its plateau level of wealth generation therefore the only way out is to spread these wealth to people who do not have it. second, the efforts of achieving hire standards than what we already have is surreal, the natural resources and new scientific innovations can not help improve the world economic status. So why talk of wealth redistribution then? Wealth redistribution has been widely used to climb the political platforms and to cling to power thrones. That is how much it can help. Assuming that everybody is a consequentialist, wealth redistribution can only benefit one person who is the person in power. The value created in this theory is of greater magnitude towards one person and leaving out hundreds, thousands millions and even billions who it should benefit. The people who use these ideas to sit on their mettle if asked to redistribute their wealth, non of them can and non of them will be willing to do so. There might be, but I have never heard of anybody who is wealthy who willingly redistributed his wealth to people in the lower part of the economic pyramid. People have donated to charities but this is different from wealth redistribution. Charity organizations get donations as acts of kindness and as a way of reaching out to the needy by giving alms. Wealth redistribution on the other hand is the theory, policy, or practice of lessening or reducing inequalities in income through such measures as progressive income taxation and antipoverty programs. This is a theory that has failed. So can we stop at that? Poverty must be fought, it cannot just go through dialogues and talks. It needs action and first a change of the spirit of the people. empowering those in the lower part of the economic pyramid and empowering them to get better in the scales of development. To achieve this, wealth redistribution must be done away with. People need to develop the theory of wealth generation since nobody is willing to redistribute their wealth. This can be done through introduction of small scale income generating projects at family levels in the grassroots targeting people on the ground. This can work if micro finance at this level is changed to suit those who live on less than a dollar day. For success and positive change, consumer behavioral advice must be given to the people on how to spend and invest their wealth for greater benefits. We cannot expect somebody who is leaving on less than a dollar a day to know how to use the extras he is getting when his income rockets to five dollars a day. This financial advice will help them develop more on how to be wealth generators and optimists instead of relying on non starter theory of wealth redistribution that has failed. As much as we might think that some millennium goals have failed, we might be wrong, as most of the goals were not fully met but the there is a significant change in terms of achievements. An example is free primary school enrollment especially girls', infant, health and mortality rates, there are a lot that has been done. The challenge now is how to make better decisions that will help us reach post millennium goals. These goals can be best achieved if we swing to grass-root development projects, develop wealth generating entrepreneurial ideas instead of wealth redistribution theory. Even though economists say that the worlds recources and factors of production are scarce, the earth has got potentials in the resources it rests on to support all that are living today. All we need to learn is how to generate income on daily basis not how to rely on others for distribution and relief.