A report on Elimu's school partnerships so far - part 1

Elimu returned two days ago from a very fruitful visit to our Kenyan partner schools accompanied by a small group of supporters. They thoroughly enjoyed their time in Kenya and finding out more about what we do.

The trip's official photographer was Lucy Strutt, an artist based in Sheffield who lived in Kenya in 2004.

Below is a selection of some of Lucy's photographs:

Kipriria Academy was thrilled to recieve 22 sports kits from its link school, The Priory, which the headteacher, Jared Nyakundi, gave to selected boys and girls. Kenya's new constitution states that women must make up at least 30% of personnel in both public and private institutions. Kipriria went for 50% for its new football team.

Interschool football matches for schools who never normally meet is fast becoming an Elimu trademark and Kipsamo School once again played host to a seven-a-side - mixed teams only! The match was refereed by Elimu advisor Andy Cooper.

All the schools played extremely well, with Kipsamo crowned the winning team!

The trip provided an opportunity for Elimu to begin to assess what impact our school link programmes - and specifically, visits from our UK schools - may be having.

A meeting with Kipsamo's headteacher, Julius Kerich, which was also attended by senior staff and PTA members, revealed that the school has seen a dramatic improvement in its English Language scores since Charles Darwin donated several dictionaries and thesaurases in July which are already showing signs of frequent use. Kipsamo, whose student population is over 450, had only one dictionary before.

Mr Kerich produced data showing that in the space of four months, the average English test score for Standard 8 (Year 9) students has risen from 34-40% to 60%. This is unprecedented in the school's history and has helped place Kipsamo in the top 12 schools in the district for the first time. Mr Kerich firmly believes that something so seemingly straightforward as having enough dictionaries for nearly a whole class is having a hugely postive effect.

Kipsamo is a government school with few resources and until now, little contact with visitors from within Nandi Hills, least of all a school in the UK. Students in Kipsamo and Charles Darwin have been writing letters to each other and sharing samples of their work.

The meeting included a discussion on the different teaching styles the school saw in July, in a country where
such exposure is rare and opportunities for professional development are few, and the inspiration one teacher in particular has taken from this.

To encourage her students to read poetry for meaning as well as memorising it, Sally Sang decided to write her own poem telling the story of some of the lives lived, and challenges faced, by Kipsamo's children which her Standard 8s subsequently performed. The poem is reproduced below with Sally's permission:

Very early in the morning,
I take my bag and dust it
Put on my tattered uniform
Then off to school I go

With an empty stomach
I ran for ten kilometres
As usual I was late
The cruel teacher met me
'Why are you late, you naughty boy?'
He shouts
I start trembling and sweating all over
He doesn't sympathise

With my tattered uniform,
Incomplete fees*
The headteacher sends me back home
After two weeks I went back to school
The class was four topics ahead

Concentation is my major problem,
My stomach starts rumbling again
Oh! The leftovers I ate last night.
'Excuse me, Sir, may I go out?'
'No! No! This time you're not going out.'
The teacher orders me to sit

I try to sleep
But the mosquito wants a share of my blood
Though this won't deny me a chance of going to Precious Blood**
'Ruiruta'
Several rats jump over me as I freeze in my bed. But nothing
Seems to worry me anymore except academic excellence,
I repeat again
Academic excellence.

Part 2 of our report on Greenfields, Nandi Hills Township and Stalion schools to follow in the coming days - along with an update on our 'Week in the Life' project!

Asante sana to those came with us to Kenya,

Jo

*Government schools often recruit contract teachers through the PTA to help reduce the student-teacher ratio. As these teachers are employed directly by the school however, rather than centrally, each family must pay a monthly fee of 100Ksh (70p) to cover the cost of their salaries.

**Precious Blood is a high performing secondary school which many students aspire to

A most gracious host

As Elimu and a small band of supporters prepare to fly out of London next week to visit our schools in Kenya... we thought we would just highlight the lovely Nandi Hills:

Below is a rough ariel map of the town itself showing where the schools are in relation to one another and places such as Tea Planters Inn, a beautiful guest house owned by Titus Kipyab, Chairman of the Kenya Tea Board and a most gracious host who, last July, moved out of his own, newly renovated home to accommodate everyone on our sixth form visit. Tea Planters feels like home to all who stay there.

Please check back from the 21st onwards for new updates from Kenya. This will include the thoughts and photo diaries of two Kenyan students, one from Kipriria and one from Kipsamo, who have been using disposable cameras sent all the way from the UK to record aspects of their lives for our new 'Week in the Life' project. The idea is to present a mix of different voices and to develop our school linking programmes.

More on that to follow - along with news from our UK partners!

And finally... we would like to say a huge thank you to ex-sixth former Kathleen Dungan, her mother Anne and the 4th Crofton Brownies. Kathleen, who is now a student at Loughborough University, took part in The Priory's visit to Kenya earlier this year and she and Anne have kindly organised for their local Brownie group to raise funds for Stalion this term. Stalion, as many of you will know, is a nursery school in Nandi Hills and Elimu's current development project. 4th Crofton Brownies raised just over £40 from a cake sale last Sunday and plan to raise some more with a bring and buy sale next month. Over the next few weeks, they will also be making Christmas decorations to sell!

We will be discussing with the school's founder next week what specifically these fundraisers should go towards.

With thanks,

Jo

FCO travel advice - not affecting us

In view of recent events along Kenya's coastline near the border with Somalia, with two Westerners kidnapped and one murdered, Elimu wishes to clarify what the Foreign Office advises and to reassure everyone of where Nandi Hills is in relation to this.

The FCO states on Saturday, 1 October:

"We now advise against all but essential travel to within 93 miles [previously 55 miles] of the Kenya-Somalia border, including along the coast strip north of Pate Island towards Somali waters.

"Both attacks were on beach-front properties. Beach-front accommodation in that area and boats off the coast are vulnerable.

"The advice is kept under constant review in the light of the situation on the ground."

The coastal area and particularly Lamu, one of a number of archipelago islands off the coast of northern Kenya where these attacks took place, is known to me from my own personal travels. Nandi Hills, where our schools are, is in the highlands of mainland western Kenya, the opposite side of the country and around 800 miles from the coast. It is at least two days' travel from here.

Elimu is subscribed to FCO updates on the East African region.

Moving onto lighter news... Elimu is pleased to announce a development in our partnership with STAR4Africa. The charity has asked me to take on the role of Consultant Programme Manager for 8 -10 hours per week to oversee their projects and to ensure that all involved are communicating with one another.

STAR4Africa will be paying a small monthly grant to Elimu in lieu of my services. Elimu has so far been run voluntarily, it is only our staff in Kenya whose expenses are paid, and our trustees have decided that half of this amount should be transfered to me.

The arrangement with STAR4Africa is for a trial period only until December.

More about STAR4Africa can be found here http://star4africa.org/

Jo

Social networking, teacher strikes, and banana trees

As schools in the UK opened this month for the start of another year, the first half of September brought teacher strikes and school closures across Kenya. This was over the chronic teacher shortages, an issue Elimu has seen in the schools we work with. Teaching unions had been pushing for permanent and pensionable contracts for the country's 18,000 contract teachers and the employment of 10,000 more. The Free Primary Education Act of 2003, which was followed in 2008 by the Free Secondary Education Act, resulted in a huge increase in school enrolment numbers but not enough teachers.

The strike ended when the government agreed to absorb the 18,000 contract teachers and to employ a further 5,000 from January. It also pledged to make provisions for teacher promotions which are currently not compensated for.

If the government follows through on its agreement, the strike will have been one of the most successful in Kenya's history.

Schools have now re-opened and our partner schools are gearing up for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations. Students sit the KCPE at 14-years-old to mark the end of primary education and to determine their eligibility for secondary school. The stakes for them are very high.

Elimu will be in Kenya in October with a small group of supporters (and would-be supporters, hopefully!) who include several staff from our long-time partner school, The Priory. The group will have a chance to find out more about our work and to spend time in Kipriria, Kipsamo and Stalion schools as well as two new schools who are keen to establish links with the UK. They are: Greenfields, Kipriria's sister school, and Nandi Hills Township, the largest public school in the area.

We will be bringing back updated reports on each of the schools, similar to the one posted here in August on Stalion, as well as a short documenary film which will include interviews with staff and students and offer more of an insight into life in Nandi Hills.

Back in the UK... An interesting and productive trustees' meeting led to some exciting fundraising ideas. These plans will be revealed shortly.

While the process of organising the 2012 sixth form trips began almost as soon as the last one ended, those who participated in July's trip have given short presentations about their experiences - and encouraged others in their schools to think about some of the ways in which their daily lives impact on people in Africa and how they can make a positive difference. After visiting a tea factory and a banana tree plantation and spending time with the people whose livelihoods depend on them, the issue of fair trade can take on a new meaning. This was the focus of a presentation to current sixth form students in Charles Darwin School by accompanying teacher Alison Roberts. Incidentally, the school's new headteacher was born in Kenya!

We look forward to having further discussions like this, to working with each of our schools and to faciliating their own growing partnerships.

Meanwhile... Elimu has now branched into the world of 'tweets' and, if we are lucky, 're-tweets', with a Twitter account. You can follow us here https://twitter.com/#!/ElimuforAfrica

Alternatively, we are also on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Elimu-Foundation/173069492728547

With thanks,

Jo

Elimu for Africa!

It has been a very busy summer for Elimu. We are pleased and excited to announce that Elimu has now graduated to registered charity status; our full, official name is the Elimu Foundation for Africa. 

There has also been some local press publicity regarding our recent trip to Kenya, while new partnerships have been established with three more like-minded organisations.

The first of these is STAR4Africa which works with isolated communities in Ghana, Malawi, Zambia and Kenya and has recently expanded its activities to include school linking. The charity 

approached us with the idea of potentially working together on parts of our school linking programmes. This includes marking international events such as World Environment Day, World Food Day, and the Day of the African Child.

We are also working with the Kakamega Environmental Education Programme (KEEP), a grassroots organisation working to save the last remaining section of tropical rainforest in East Africa through environmental education, raising awareness in local communities, and developing economic alternatives to the use of forest reserves. Our sixth form trips to Kenya include a guided walk in Kakamega (led by the extremely knowledgeable Abraham), and from 2012, an overnight stay in the forest in KEEP's eco-friendly accommodation. All proceeds go towards KEEP's environmental education programmes in local schools.

Elimu recently became a member of Think Global which helps people learn about issues of global justice and development and to make connections between these things and their own lives. This is the main principle behind Elimu's school linking programmes.

Links to all our partner organisations can be found on our main website http://www.elimufoundation.org.uk/

We would like to thank both The Priory and Charles Darwin for supplying additional teaching resources and sports equipment to their link schools, Kipriria Academy and Kipsamo School. They have also been fundraising for new text books as part of an ongoing initiative for our UK schools to help stock brand new, first time libraries in the Kenyan schools. Kipsamo now has 22, rapturously recieved dictionaries and thesaureses where it had only one before. The Priory's Ann-Marie Bradley, who has now completed her A-Levels and a second trip to Kenya, presented Kipriria's staff and students with several new story books as a gift to the school from her family.

Below is a report on Stalion nursery and infants school detailing more about the school, its character, management, and hopes for the future.

Stalion will be re-developed in stages. Stage 1 will lay the foundations for the new school up to the window level at a cost of £5,000. Builders have been found in Nandi Hills and Elimu's fundraising efforts for the next several months will be concentrated on this project so that work can begin on the new building as soon as possible.

If you would like to help, or if you have any suggestions, please contact us via our website - and keep an eye out for our next fundraiser.

And finally... thank you to Rob Probin who has worked with us from the very early days of a one-off project which grew into Elimu and who came on two trips to Kenya, before retiring from The Priory School this past July. After 32 years, Rob is now moving onto new things and we wish him well with all of them.

Best wishes to all our partner schools for a peaceful and productive new term,

Jo

In the Nandi, the mighty Nandi...

Colobus monkeys, epic traffic jams on dusty roads, songs on tap, excited children, playground games and nine-a-side, Kiswahili lessons with the headmaster, teaching, tea factories and tree planting... These were things which characterised Elimu's latest trip to Kenya with sixth form students and teachers from The Priory School, in Orpington, Kent, and Charles Darwin School in nearby Biggin Hill.

They were greeted warmly by their partner schools, Kipriria and Kipsamo, and by the people of Nandi Hills. Lively exchanges took place in the market stalls in town, with impromptu Q&A sessions all about England, and, at one point, a young mother's tongue-in-cheek offer to hand over her two-year-old, free of charge.

Prior to our arrival, Elimu's enterprising in-country rep., Sally Sang, had enquired about the possibility of tree planting which led the Ministry for Forestry to very generously donate 1000 seedlings as part of Kenya's conservation drive and to help mark our visit. The idea of planting a few trees having taken on a new meaning, 51 eucalyptus, cypress and indigineous trees were planted in the grounds of Kipsamo School by our party of 20 together with Elimu staff, Kipsamo teachers and local elders. The remaining seedlings will go to other schools in Nandi Hills.

Our visit to Kipsamo generated much interest among the school's teaching staff and also local educationalists who were keen to observe our teachers and to find out about education in the UK. The day's events, organised by Sally to introduce Charles Darwin and Kipsamo for the first time, included an inter-schools football match. All of which was captured on film by our own cameraman, Rob Probin of The Priory School, and by a television news reporter. A special news feature was subsequently beamed across Kenya's Rift Valley.

Our sixth form students experienced life at the front of the classroom, too, and did an excellent job of teaching Kipriria's students playground games with educational messages which encourage teamwork, reflection and real-life application. These games were inspired by the organisation Right to Play and taught to the sixth formers during orientation. Kipriria's headteacher, Jared Nyakundi, held daily Kiswahili lessons with them which went down so well that by the end they were composing songs using both Kiswahili and English, including a reworking of the 'Lion King' song, this time with the line:

'In the Nandi, the mighty Nandi, Elimu rips it up!'

We thank everyone involved in this trip: our many hosts, the sixth formers and their teachers, Alison, Hazel, Kerim and Rob, who shared their own unique styles of teaching. Also, our headteachers, 
Jared Nyakundi (Kipriria), Julius Kerich (Kipsamo), Nick Ware (The Priory School) and Rob Higgins (newly retired from Charles Darwin) as well as Kipriria's director, David Yego, for his unending hospitality and the use of his school bus! We have been involved with Kipriria and The Priory in different ways for a long time.

Elimu has a lot of work ahead with each of the schools to ensure that their links with one another, and with other local schools who may benefit from coming together more often, are worthwhile both in the moment and in the longer term. Our fundraising plans for the next year are focused on Stalion nursery and infants school.

In the meantime... please consider donating to the Red Cross' East Africa Food Crisis appeal for the people affected by the famine in the Horn of Africa, the worst it has seen for 60 years. This includes north-west Kenya. Ordinary Kenyans have so far contributed 100 million Ksh. (around £700,000) to the relief effort through the Kenyans for Kenya initiative.

Food costs in the rest of the country have more than doubled since January. We saw during our visit to Nandi Hills that this has resulted in an increase in school fees as schools will otherwise be unable to continue feeding children.

What has happened, and is happening now, is a complex situation but we emphasise the importance of joining Kenyan people in giving to the Red Cross appeal to help where it can with the current crisis: 
http://www.redcross.org.uk/foodcrisis/?approachcode=68764_heroEAfrFood

The Independent has a report on the situation in north-west Kenya available on its website

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/kenya-is-on-the-brink-of-its-own-disaster-2329287.html While the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), a non-profit organisation whose Flying Doctor Service we sign-up to for our school trips, has further insights and updates http://www.amref.org/news/update-on-amref-drought-response/

Asante sana,

Jo

Music for Stalion

With less than two months to go before our second school group makes its way through the arrivals hall of Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Airport, out into the city's cool nightime air and up to the suburbs of Langata... and on the next day to Naivasha to walk with zebra, antelope and giraffe and through the Rift Valley to the green and glorious Nandi Hills... our thoughts are very much on Kenya.

In the meantime, we have a parents' meeting and an itinerary to present and run through and on Wednesday, 25th May, a music concert in support of our soon-to-be-built nursery school, Stalion. This is Elimu's first organised fundraiser. James Dwyer, an Elimu trustee and a talented pianist who has played by ear since the age of four, will be playing a selection of modern and contemporary music on the piano at the Ripley Arts Centre in Bromley.

Wine and refreshments will be provided and all are welcome to come along for a relaxed Summer's evening of good company and fine entertainment. There will also be a chance to meet a few more of the Elimu team, with a short presentation from one of our advisors and former Kenya volunteer Andy Cooper, as well as our current and upcoming school partners.

We hope to see as many people as possible so please do spread the word (please see previous posts for photographs of Stalion school in its current form and why it has become our first project). July's trip to Kenya will include a visit to Stalion and according to the headteacher and Elimu rep. Sally Sang, a specially arranged evening meal in the school. They are very much looking forward to welcoming a few visitors.  

With thanks,

Jo