Improve education for 2,500 children in Kenya

The new academic year started in Kenya this week after a break of nearly two months but it has been anything but quiet in our partner schools over this time.

Our food supplier last week delivered nearly 15,000kg of dried maize, rice and beans – at a cost of some £11,386 – which will be used to provide a daily lunchtime meal to all 3,000 children for the first half of term. We begin the year with sufficient funds to cover the cost of the programme for the entire year (albeit at the optimistic end of our forecasts!)
 
Additionally, a wide range of repair and maintenance work has been undertaken at a number of schools since schools closed for the holidays in November using around £3,000 that we have donated specifically towards these activities. This includes repainting (inclusive of chalkboards), replacement of missing/broken window glasses and fixures, repair to steelworks including doors and furniture, filling of potholes in eroded cement floors, and so much more.

At Mkamenyi Primary, our eighth partner school which is in the fourth year of a £250,000+ rebuild, we have used the longest absence of children from classrooms since in-school learning resumed post Covid-closures to fit glazing to windows and to begin painting, including in classrooms that were constructed in the early stages of the project and which have already been in operation for more than two years.

The transformation of the central courtyard area has also been completed with the installation of rainwater harvesting tanks with a combined capacity of 60,000 litres and construction of retaining walls, paved pathways and an assembly ground (complete with essential flag post!). We are excited to see this space evolve in the months and years to come once trees, shrubs and grasses are planted and mature.

Projects will continue even now that schools have reopened, not only at Mkamenyi but especially at Jora Primary where we are building new toilets and a dining hall, and creating a new playground area for the pre-school children: it is fitting, in the month that we have turned 15 years old as a registered charity, that we are back at the school where our story originally began all the way back in 2006!

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After the disruption caused by Covid-related school closures last year, the 2020 academic year has finally come to a close in Kenya for all pupils, nearly 19 months after it started. 

But after a holiday period of just one week, the delayed 2021 academic year has already started in earnest with schools now operating at full capacity for the first time since March. There still remains around 20 weeks of learning between now and the end of the calendar year, with the academic year then due to carry over into the first quarter of 2022.

We continue to do whatever we can to support our partner schools and to keep staff and pupils safe in the face of a worsening Covid situation nationally in Kenya.

Our supply of food for the lunch programme has continued uninterrupted and foodstuffs for the first half of this latest term have already been delivered to schools, much to the delight of headteachers and school management boards.

“Lots of appreciations to African Promise for the continued support of the feeding programme in our school.”

With the dry season biting and rain not having fallen in parts of our project area since the beginning of May, we have been supplying clean water to those schools where reserves of rainwater have been exhausted and/or where other water sources are insufficient or too unreliable to meet demand. This includes our latest partner school at Mkamenyi Primary where rainwater presents the only viable source of clean water and where we aim to add a further 100,000 litres of storage capacity over the next few months, as part of our on-going redevelopment of the school which, in recent months, has included the addition of further new classrooms as well as the provision of furniture and equipment for classrooms and administration spaces.

Adding to the investments we made in Covid-prevention measures at the end of last year, and earlier this year, we have recently provided our schools with further funds to purchase cleaning equipment and PPE, either to add to items purchased previously where they were insufficient or to replace exhausted supplies. We will continue to do this for as long as is necessary.  

Having been supporting teacher and support staff salaries in full up until January and subsequently at 75%, our contribution reduced to 50% as planned in April, with schools responsible for making up the other half with funds collected from parents or elsewhere.

Our work at Mkamenyi Primary has remained the focus of our infrastructure development programme in recent months but with funding secured for many elements of that project and with expenditure falling in areas such as teacher salary funding, we are turning our attention back to improvements that need to be made across our existing network, and we have a number of projects earmarked for the coming months.  

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