● Kenya Project
There are 3 important elements to this project:
- Working with SI Kisumu.
- Raising money to improve conditions at the nursery school in Ebusakami and to help SI Kisumu meet its objectives.
- Facilitating and monitoring a link between pupils at Hampshire secondary schools and Ebusakami Secondary School.
We are pleased to be working with SI Kisumu in Kenya who approached us with the idea of supporting a nursery school in Luanda, one of the poorest and most densely populated areas in western Kenya. It is about 25 kilometres from Kisumu City where the club is based and just a few kilometres from the equator.
Kenya has introduced free primary education for all children but not preschool education. Preschool education is too expensive for poor families and yet is recognised as being critical in breaking the cycle of generational poverty and illiteracy and for protecting the most vulnerable small children.
The nursery school was set up in 2006. It consists of one building made of mud with a mud floor. It has two teachers, one volunteer and one helper. The age range of the children is from 3 to 6 years, after which they join the primary school and subsequently, one hopes, the secondary school, both of which are nearby.
The school had no immediate access to clean, safe domestic water. There is dire need to improve sanitation in the school. It is for this reason that SI Kisumu has identified clean, safe water as the top priority for the school.
We are delighted that the money we have sent so far has meant that the school now has a huge tank to capture water from the roof, the walls of the classroom have been plastered and the floor cemented. Not only will our money fund a new classroom, it will also provide new desks for this classroom and books and stationery for the whole school in the next academic year.
Additionally SI Kisumu has a plan to install a fireless cooker and build a kitchen so that the children’s meals can be cooked in a clean environment. For now they are cooking outside – not ideal in the rainy season! We have already collected enough money to cover these costs.
Our fundraising for this project has been painless, indeed pleasurable. One of our members has a house on the coast in Devon which she has offered to the club at a modest rental with all proceeds going to the joint SI Kisumu project. We expect to raise £3,000 in the year and, as we have already seen, that goes a long way in Kenya.
We have had a very encouraging response from two local schools for the inter-school link. We are in the process of preparing information packs which we will give to these schools when we give presentations at their assemblies in September.
- School 1 wants to set an ambitious programme for all 200 of its Year 9 pupils. This will form part of their citizenship examination and will focus on a comparison of the education systems in the two countries and how each is valued by its beneficiaries. The information they collect will be disseminated to the rest of the school. The Head of Geography also wants to use the link to attack the big issue of clean water in the third world through this one small example.
- School 2 will be studying aspects of nutrition via the nursery’s feeding programme.
We are very impressed by the professionalism of SI Kisumu. They send us detailed financial accounts and updates on the work in hand and have been very helpful in providing the information we need for the inter-schools link.