Empower, Engage, Educate in Rural Kenya!

This year's Reading Challenge King and Queen were crowned this month! The Kenya Connect Reading Challenge, now in its third year, challenges students to read 25 books to become a reading champion. With colorful guides created by students at Garrison Forest School, the students record the books they have read. This year's reading challenge theme was water, and in addition to providing space to list the books, the guides had fun water facts and word games and activities.

Jorma was crowned King for reading 166 books and is a student at the Wamunyu Junior Academy grade 5.

 He shared, "I am very happy to be the King Reader in Kenya Connect Reading Challenge 2021. I attribute this to the effort and courage I got after participating in the crowning of the King and Queen reader in 2020. I promised myself to read many books in the next Challenge. Yes, I got it. My secret was after reading the two books that I used to check out, I would borrow more books from my friends. I loved reading books from the Magic Tree House series. My favorite title was the Dragon King in which Jack and Annie saved the book that was to be burned. I would urge my fellow learners to be checking out books and reading them. Did you know that I also enjoyed learning more about water from the Reading Challenge guide illustrations?"

Purity, a student from Kaliambeu in grade 8 is this year's Queen. She read 254 books and shared,

 "I am very excited to be the Queen reader in the Kenya Connect Reading Challenge. Even though I used to check out two big volume books with my library card, I would go a step further to borrow more books from my classmates My favorite book was Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones .I learnt that you should not envy your friends. I would like to encourage other learners to read books and not to judge books by their covers. There are some books without pictures but when you read them you find that they are very interesting. Through reading many books during the Challenge, I have gained a lot of vocabulary. My fluency in English communication has improved and also my composition writing skills."

 Our Librarian Esther shared this reflection, "The Reading Challenge has given learners a competitive opportunity and exciting time to read and interact with as many books as possible. It has actually spurred the love of books among many learners.The gifts that we are issuing are making learners to get more excited about reading books.They are a great motivation for learners to read more books in the coming Reading Challenge."

We are thrilled that 325 other students completed the challenge by reading 25+ books. All winners received a drawstring bag created by women in the community and screened by our staff. They also received some pencils too. This program is helping us to grow a community of readers.

We are deeply grateful to the students at Garrison Forest School for creating the Reading Challenge guides and the Henry E. Niles Foundation for support for the prizes.  Donations from friends like you helped us build our School Library program and have helped stocked our library so students have a wide variety of books to read.  We are deeply grateful.

Wamunyu is becoming, "The Village That Reads." Thank you for opening the joy, wonder and knowledge of books to our community.  Wishing you and your family a peaceful and healthy holiday season.

"I wonder if the charcoal will filter the water?" Our budding scientists at Kituiu Primary School are working on filtering water using a simple filter design with cotton, clean sand, ground charcoal, and dirty water. Will the water come clean? Participating in LevelUp Village's Water Crisis class, these students are learning about how waterways become dirty and ways to filter and clean water to make it safe for drinking.  Robert, a student at Kituiu shared, "During this term we have been learning about the water crisis through LevelUp Village.  In this course I learned about water filtration.  Teacher Patrick taught us how water seeps into the ground.  I learned how to clean water and make it safe for drinking.  What has excited me the most is the experiments we have been doing about water filtration and how underground water can be contaminated by human activity."

Hands-on learning solidifies concepts and requires students to use critical thinking and creativity to solve problems.  They learn how to question, make hypotheses and learn from results.  This enrichment program also connects Kituiu PS with a class in the United States. They share how their experiments worked and tell their peers about the challenge of clean water in Kenya.

As they study the challenges of keeping water clean in Kenya, they are hearing from their peers about water in the U.S. Being curious about where their peers live, students use a globe to see where the U.S. is in relation to Kenya and then finding the state of their new friend.  

Our goal is to continue to support and expand these enrichment programs and to nurture future scientists!  If you missed our virtual field trip, you can get a glimpse of our LevelUp Village partnership in this VIDEO.

These types of classes require us to have engaged staff members leading the programs and the appropriate supplies.  Your donation is helping us to provide these enriching programs.  

We are very excited to be participating in GlobalGivings "Move A Million" GivingTuesday incentive.  We invite yout to mark your calendars for November 30th to make a gift to Kenya Connect.  All gifts will be matched which means your gift will have a further impact.

As always, we are deeply grateful to you for supporting students like Robert, and the work of Kenya Connect.