KEEPING AKILI GIRLS IN SCHOOL THROUGH SCHOLARSHIPS

Dear Friends,

It has been a wonderful semester for us, thanks to your steadfast support. The 15 students in our scholarship program brought their report cards to the ROF office at the end of the semester. With your support, these girls joined high school for the first time in their lives in August 2021 having graduated from Akili Preparatory School in April. The report cards showed how they had performed in school for the past 3 months. All the 15 girls were ranked in the top 10 in their respective classes with 95% of them scoring a mean grade of A.  One of the beneficiaries is a 15 year old girl/orphan who was able to join St. Mark’s Obambo Mixed Secondary School in Kisumu. Her father passed on 15 years ago, 2 weeks before she was born. A 2nd born in a family of 5, her single mother was unable to support her and her siblings forcing her to visit and stay with her grandmother in Kanyawegi village. Since joining Akili School 5 years ago, she has been able to access free quality education with the organization meeting all her needs of 3 meals a day, stationery/school supplies, uniforms, sanitary pads, mentorship etc to allow her to concentrate in her studies without worrying about how her needs will be met. 

She told us that when she grows up, she would like to be a doctor to treat the sick and help the needy in her community. Apart from academics, she enjoys playing football and listening to music. She has been through a lot of challenges and has always wanted to lift her mother and siblings out of poverty when she succeeds in her education. Since 2020, her greatest challenge has been to see her mother bedridden in hospital where she stayed for two and a half years while suffering from throat cancer. She says that she went through a very  difficult time seeing her mother lose her ability to provide for her other siblings. Different thoughts crossed her mind. For a long time, she couldn’t concentrate in class and thought about her often. She was preparing for her high school entry exams and the teachers and staff at Akili school provided psychosocial support that helped her to overcome her struggles. 

Despite this, she passed her exams scoring 339 marks out of the possible 500 in April 2021. Her mother was very proud of her and encouraged her to keep working hard in school. She really wanted her mom to hold on and see her succeed in life and help her family. Unfortunately, she succumbed to throat cancer in August 2021, only  a few days after she joined high school. Despite her massive loss, the challenges that continue to come her way  and the responsibilities and pressure that comes with being the only hope for her family, she has remained focussed and registered a stellar performance in her first year of high school. She scored a mean grade of A and straight As in Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology and ranked 10th out of 259 students in her class. We are very grateful to you and all our supporters who give so generously to keep girls like her in school and allow them to focus on their studies and simply be girls. We are doing our best to see her stay in school and work towards realizing her dream of being a doctor.

As we continue to transition these wonderful girls to high school, our major challenge is to keep them in school for 3 semesters in a year, and ultimately 4 years of high school education. $10 buys stationery and sanitary pads while tution/school fees costs $100 per year to keep a girl in a day secondary school in Kenya. $500 can sponsor 5 girls for an entire school year. Any donation of $10 or more helps us to realize this goal. 

A generous anonymous donor on GlobalGiving Org has agreed to match new monthly donations at 100% through the end of the year, or until funds run out. Therefore, donors who set up a new monthly donation to a project will have their first donation matched up to $200! For example, if you set up a new $25 monthly donation, GlobalGiving Org will donate an additional $25 to the project one time.

We would be very much grateful if we could get a few monthly donors to provide us with a regular/predictable source of funds that we can use to budget and support girls like her and allow them to complete 4 years of high school education. If you are able to, please consider donating to keep the Akili Girls in School. You can also consider donating to  our girls scholarship fund campaign or share these links https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/theakiligirlsscholarshipfund/Short link: http://goto.gg/52629 with friends.

Thank you so much for your continued support. God bless you. 

Dear friends,

I hope you are all safe, and that the Covid 19 situation is getting better in your respective countries. We are all safe and continue to support our girls despite the pandemic. There has been a sharp increase in covid 19 cases and deaths especially in Kisumu City where we are.  Counties in western Kenya including Kisumu are being watched closely and restrictions have been placed on all public gatherings, non food markets etc to curtail the spread of the disease. 

We are focussing on supporting our girls in their classrooms where we are observing social distancing and limiting class sizes to under fifteen students. We are immensely grateful to God for keeping us all safe and providing all the girls needed to stay in school despite the prevailing circumstances. 

We are particularly grateful for your generous gift of $3,714 which you have helped us raise over the past 6 months. We are very grateful for the 41 donations we have received from each one of you. We thank everyone who has taken their time and donated $10 or more towards helping us keep our girls in school. We are also deeply thankful for the recurring donations we continue to receive from you. 

With the funds, we have kept the girls in school by paying our teachers, buying school supplies including stationery and food, utilities as well as meeting our statutory obligations. 

Because of your support, we were able to keep over 50 needy girls at the Akili school and effectively support our 8th graders who sat for their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCPE) exams in April 2021. 

We are excited that with your help, we have managed to transition 15 girls to high school this month! They excelled in their primary school exit exams and have joined high school for the first time. It is a dream come true for many of them who never thought they would ever join high school to continue their education because of their poor backgrounds. Thank you so much for giving to keep their dreams alive. We are honored to partner with you to play a small part in giving these wonderful girls an opportunity to access education that will no doubt transform their lives and give them a better future for them and their families. 

Through our partnership with  Daraja Academy http://www.daraja-academy.org , one of our girls was able to be admitted to this prestigious school that offers free high school education to economically marginalized girls and nurtures them to be the next community leaders. We are keen to scout and establish partnerships with such schools so that our girls can access free high school education.  

We have enrolled the rest of the girls to affordable and reputable day schools which cost about $150 per student annually. Our goal is to raise $1500 to sponsor 10 girls this year and a further $3000 to support 20 girls in 2022. 

We recently participated in a research that sought to establish covid 19 related barriers that are likely to prevent girls from returning to school. The research established that teenage pregnancy (largely caused by transactional sex for basic goods such as food, menstrual hygiene products, clothing and lifts to school) was the main barrier causing girls to drop out of school. We are working hard with all our partners to remove these barriers and ensure that  girls #ReturntoSchool and continue learning by supporting sustainable school lunch programs and  providing free school uniforms, sanitary pads, underwear/panties, as well as bicycles for girls to cycle to school. We were able to transition 586 boys and girls to high school this month (August 2021) by giving them school uniforms and shoes; a barrier which has traditionally held back many students from progressing to high school.

We are keen to mentor our girls and nurture them to be the leaders that champion sustainable change  in their communities. We plan to hold leadership camps during school holidays once the covid situation eases.

We can't thank you enough for being there for the girls and for all of us at Riley Orton Foundation. We are blessed to have such a wonderful community of friends like you. Again, thank you for keeping the doors of education open to the needy girls in our community. May God richly bless you all!

Regards,