A clear vision for a new year

A new year brings many new things for Elimu. 2011 will be the year we become fully established.

We are continuing the work we started in part more than two years ago and moving forward with a clear vision for Elimu’s future.

Our work combines the practical with first-hand interactions and experiences.

By the close of 2010, Elimu was establishing its second school link, this time between Charles Darwin School in Biggin Hill, Kent, and Kipsamo School in Nandi Hills, Kenya. With a focus on raising aspirations and cultural awareness and understanding through learning about each other’s countries and communities, these links are developed by the schools and supported by us. We help to facilitate them.  

Kipsamo's headteacher, Julius Kerich, along with other headteachers in Nandi, had expressed an interest last year in partnering a school in the UK and we are slowly but surely responding and setting-up more of them.

It was Jared Nyakundi, the head of Kipriria Academy, a school I have been involved with now for seven years and whose link with The Priory marked the start of all of this, who suggested the name ‘elimu’, which translates as ‘education’ in Kiswahili.

The Priory is returning to Kenya with Elimu in July following the success of its first visit last year. Another group of sixth form students, along with accompanying members of staff, will be welcomed into the Nandi Hills community whilst volunteering their time and skills in Kipriria. They include a teacher and two students from Charles Darwin. This is to introduce Charles Darwin to the charity’s work in Kenya and to enable them to visit Kipsamo as well (we will most likely be there with Kipriria for another World Cup style football match and certainly, for some tea!) whilst connecting a total of four ‘Elimu schools.’

The support that schools can give to one another, especially in Africa’s challenged rural areas where they often don’t have a chance to meet, is not to be overlooked.

No less intricate, but in some ways more apparent and easier to measure, are the practical projects we are supporting to improve educational quality and provision.

Our UK schools are fundraising to build new libraries in their Kenyan partner schools, the first of the small-medium scale projects we have collectively identified as ones they will help to support in their partner schools and which Elimu will oversee.

Meanwhile, our own initial designated project, to re-build Stalion nursery and infants school, is set to begin in the coming months. Stalion was one of several schools I visited in Kenya in May 2010, and possibly the most basic. The school had opened five months previously (the first nursery school in Nandi Hills) in a hut made from corrugated iron with no lighting, three classrooms each separated by a doorway but no doors, old cardboard boxes lining the walls, three teachers, and very few resources. The school currently has 50 children aged from three to five-years-old.

 

Stalion was founded by a local teacher and former headteacher, Sally Sang, who wanted the school to be 'a model learning centre for the little ones.' During a recent correspondence, she said: 'At the beginning of this year, many more parents came to ask for a chance for their children to come here but unfortunately, we could not admit them because the school does not have enough facilities and we cannot ask parents to buy them. The school is situated in town where there are many slums around and most parents are poor, so many children are at home, and that is why I started this nursery. My main objective was to offer basic education to these children who are likely to miss education in their lives.'*

It is an ambitious project costing £15,000 but one which will benefit the children who attend the school now and the many more who, if we make this a reality, will do so in the future, and for longer. Sally's hope, and ours, is to expand the school to offer more infant classes, starting with a Year 1 class.

If you feel inspired in any way and would like to help us, please do spread the word or visit the Supporting Us page on our website http://www.elimufoundation.org.uk/ where you can also find out more about our work and approach.

We thank our friends and supporters so far and are grateful to all our partner schools.

Best wishes for the New Year,

Jo

*http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6068605