Carla Cattelan
Carla Cattelan is the person who flagged off Watoto Ciao as an organization to care for children with disabilities. She had come to Kenya from Italy in 2005 and as soon as she had joined the Nairobi Children Remand Home as a volunteer, she realized the marginalisation and rejection children with disabilities were experiencing behind bars. They had been rescued from the streets and dropped in the correctional institution since there was no alternative shelter for them. She immediately acted to have them assessed, provided with medical care and engaged in a family reintegration programme. As soon as most of them were positively exited from the institution, a Remand Home’s staff requested for her own child’s support. Carla envisioned an intervention to further explore the conditions of children with disabilities in the surrounding area and proposed a sensitization campaign to mobilise the local community. Joined by a couple of friends she visited local faith based communities inviting people to volunteer to identify children with disabilities in order to support their medical care and social inclusion. As the number of volunteers and newly identified children with disabilities kept growing, the need to structure a medical and community intervention led to establish the Watoto Ciao Trust alongside with her husband and one family friend. They formed the initial Watoto Ciao Board of Governors, which became operational through three hired techincal staff. She kept volunteering for Watoto Ciao as the administrator and fundraiser, while being quite busy at the Italian Embassy where she worked and as a mother of three kids.
Carla had a very straight insight on how to work with children with disabilities and their families since in Italy she had been volunteering in the same field from her teenage years.
She believed that children with disabilities are a gift to communities which through them can rediscover their ability to care, love and be compassionate. Children with disabilities can enrich their communities and make them better places to live. However, to achieve such a vision, Watoto Ciao had to shift from being a service provider to a community based organization rooted in the texture of the social fabric. That’s the reason she insisted that each and every intervention had to be implemented only through the community. Watoto Ciao grew with this vision until she got sick. She bravely fought the disease and would just smile it away. Sadly, she passed on in 2015, leaving behind a great legacy.