FCO map and update 28 May

Elimu would like to acknowledge news reports of an explosion at a shopping centre in Nairobi earlier today. The cause of the blast is not yet known; Kenyan police stated this afternoon that it may be due to an electrical fault in the building rather than an act of terrorism.

Foreign Office advice on travel to Kenya remains the same. The FCO said on 28 May:

The overall level of the advice has not changed.  We advise against all but essential travel to within 60km of the Somali border (including Kiwayu and coastal areas north of Pate Island), to Garissa district and to low income areas of Nairobi, including all township or slum areas.

The Foreign Office website now includes a map of Kenya highlighting exactly which parts of the country it advises against travelling to; our trips are not affected by this. Please click on the map below to enlarge:

With best wishes,

Jo

Saturday's menu!

Saturday is fast approaching - and here is a glimpse of our menu for the evening:

*Fruit punch served on arrival*

*Morroccan style meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce
*Rice
*Cous cous
*Hommous
*Pitta/breads/breadsticks
*Olives

*Fresh fruit on tables

A very big thank you to the excellent Kevin French who is kindly donating the food, his time and his culinary skills.

Jo

*please bring own drinks; glasses will be provided.

1 month, 29 days and counting...

With precisely one month and 29 days to go until our next school trip departs for Africa, a round-up of Elimu news.

March was our 18 mile sponsored walk to the Kenyan Embassy with this year's sixth formers. They were raising funds for their trip and were a pleasure to spend time with. We were blessed all day with blue skies and sunshine. Well done to all of them and thank you very much to those who gave up their Saturday to come along and support.

April, meanwhile, has been both a busy and a contemplative month. There has been much to think about regarding Elimu's future plans and fundraising, details of which will be reported soon, and also final preparations to make for Kenya.

This will be the trip that builds on the last two years, both pre- Elimu and the one that took place at the very start of it, to not only offer further opportunities for schools from both countries to come together but to also explore more fully the role of teachers and teacher development in our work.

We have seen already how the sharing and practice of different teaching styles and ideas can have a positive effect on teacher morale and student learning.

In Kipsamo School, the presence of one UK teacher last year has led to an early review of the way poetry is taught. There has been a growing emphasis on poetry for meaning and as a forum in which to develop analytical skills. This is something that is usually done at secondary level, but as one district education officer in Nandi Hills observed, in Kenya, children are aged 14 or older by that time. As such, they do not have as much of a chance to develop those skills even though they are the ones that are needed the most and that will feature in their exams.

Once, a long time ago, I had a conversation with another volunteer about why I was teaching my classes quotes from Shakespeare and showing them some of my favourite poems. He wondered if those things were important when faced with low literacy rates. I wondered if perhaps he was right. It is all too easy, then and now, to take the wrong approach and do the wrong thing. But my students had begun to tell me what they thought those quotes and poems might mean, and bit by bit, to analyse them.

Through Elimu's school link programme, we want to support literacy in African schools (the results of which we are also beginning to now see) whilst enabling them to consider teaching and learning in different ways, to the benefit of their teachers as well as their students. One cannot exist without the other.

In July Kipsamo will host its second teacher conference involving our visting UK schools, The Priory and Bishop Justus, as well as three other local schools.

Last week's Times Educational Supplement carries an article on Elimu that I wrote to highlight the impact of these visits on our students here. http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6210950

Interestingly, Clare Deacon who is on our advisory board recently came across this video about being both an NGO and a tour operator, and finding a balance between the two. Recommended.

http://lessonsilearned.org/2012/04/meet-pepy-tours/

In other news, Happy Birthday to Elimu advisor Andy Cooper who celebrates the end of one decade and the start of another - and a special mention to our web designer, Bob Jones. Bob very kindly developed the website on a voluntary basis and continues to maintain it on the charity's behalf. He is currently working on a major revamp of the site which will see this blog incorporated onto the homepage. We are extremely grateful to Bob for his patience and hardwork. For anyone looking for a reliable, skilled website designer, Bob can be found here http://www.mynameisbobby.co.uk/

This Saturday is our African themed fundraising evening which is being held in the Art Department at The Priory School. We are delighted to announce that the Bromley Mayor has accepted our invitation and will be in attendance along with staff, parents, students and friends of both ours and the school's.

A short film of our most recent trips to Kenya will be screened. There will be an auction of special prizes and a photographic display featuring 40 of the photographs our almost-resident photographer, Lucy Strutt, took of the people and places we work with when she visited Kenya last October. These photos will also be up for auction. Here is a quick preview:

The event is primarily to support the long awaited re-construction of Stalion nursery and infants school.

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible!

With thanks,

Jo

Invitation to African Themed Evening fundraiser

We would like to invite all our supporters to the following fundraising event (please click to enlarge):

The evening promises good company, fun and laugher, and a nice atmosphere. For directions on how to get to The Priory School, which is kindly allowing us to hold the event in its Art Department, please visit www.priory.bromley.sch.uk or email joanne@elimufoundation.org.uk

The view from Nairobi: report from Elimu advisor Andy Cooper

Elimu advisor Andy Cooper has been in Kenya recently for his day job - and sent this reassuring report back to the trustees and to the headteachers of our UK schools on the current security situation there:

While in Kenya, I took the time to just have a look round Nairobi (and particularly places like the airport where our school trips will have to spend time) to look at the security measures in places. This was mainly just for reassurance - Elimu trips spend very little time in Nairobi.

Overall I have to say I was very impressed. The Kenyan government are aware of the potential adverse effects on tourism and travel and are being proactive. There are rigorous road blocks on the way to the airport, bags are scanned as you enter the terminal building and again as you go through security. You can't get anywhere near the airport without having had both you and everything you're traveling with checked.

I also took the opportunity to meet with the drivers we use for airport transfers. Again, I was very impressed. Sammy (the main man) and his team have actually added two new vehicles to their fleet of already well maintained cars. They're also well up to speed on the current political stand off in the north of Kenya. While they're quite keen to stress how safe Nairobi is they will also err on the side of caution if in doubt.

We all saw the recent Foreign Office warning about Nairobi but I can happily report that the Kenya I've seen over the past few months has been much as it always is; beautiful, vibrant, welcoming, hilarious, infuriating.

Andy

Networking off Fleet Street and a thoughtful interview with some very accomplished students!

Last week proved particularly enjoyable for Elimu with a successful networking event and a thought-provoking interview. It had quite a journalistic theme running through it as one of my lessons (in my other job as an English teacher at Charles Darwin School) was also focused on news media.

On Thursday, there was an evening reception celebrating Britain's 50 new radicals, and those on this year's long-list, including Elimu. The event was held at the NESTA offices (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts - an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative) near London's Fleet Street and attended by The Observer newspaper, its partner and associate.

Elimu trustee Helen, a former Observer staffer, came along too. It was lovely to meet individuals and organisations we wouldn't have known about otherwise that are doing some wonderful work in both the UK and elsewhere and with whom we hope to keep in-touch. They include a charity that works with schools in Tanzania. We also chatted to Observer editor John Mulholland who has said he would be interested in hearing more about Elimu.

The following morning, I called into The Priory for the second time in a mere few days! A lunchtime meeting earlier in the week with our Kenya-bound sixth formers was a chance for us to catch-up and to hear how well they are doing with their fundraising activities. They have been busy organising cake sales, bag packing days at Marks & Spencer and attracting sponsorship for our upcoming walk.

On Friday, I was there to be interviewed by representatives of Year 8 as part of a BBC school report project that they are involved in. The Priory's Year 8s have just started a unit of work all about Kenya so it was a very timely interview, too.

They were fantastically well-prepared and faultlessly polite. Danny led the way with some very thoughtful, mature questions while the boys took photographs. After they went away to type up their article under a strict deadline and like the journalists they could well be, their teacher, Mr Pollard, took me to see the rest of the team in the classroom that's currently doubling as a newsroom. They were getting ready to do some filming.

It was a pleasure to meet them all. I look forward to reading the finished article and wish them luck with the rest of the project - it culminates with a live news day on 15th March. Expect to see The Priory on the BBC news site http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolreport/

With thanks to Danny, Scott and Co.,

Jo

Celebrating Kipsamo

Some happy news all the way from Nandi Hills: a special event was held yesterday at Kipsamo School to celebrate its students and thank its teachers for the school's good performance in the recent KCPE examinations.

Elimu rep. Sally Sang sent this report:

'The day was organised by the headteacher, school committee and parents of Kipsamo. This was a way of thanking teachers for the good performance. All pupils who did well from Standard 1 to Standard 8 of last year were also awarded prizes.

The guests were the District Education Officers, the chiefs and the school patron who brought presents to the teachers, students and the school. Mr Kerich appreciated Elimu and Charles Darwin School for the dictionaries because this is what boosted the mean score.

It was a wonderful celebration that has never been done before.'

Many congratulations to all the staff and students at Kipsamo School!

Photos to follow.