A new school for 500+ pupils in rural Kenya

Despite unusually heavy seasonal rains in Kenya over the last couple of months we have managed to make significant progress on the first phase of the new school at Mkamenyi Primary.

With a workforce of 30 builders and labourers on site, we completed construction of the walls of the first parts of the new school, which includes four classrooms, staffroom and offices, and a multi-purpose library/computer/meeting room, before Christmas and after a delay of three weeks whilst we waited for timber to be delivered we have now started work on roofing, whilst steel windows and doors are manufactured off-site.

We expect these new facilities to be operational within the next 3-4 months and we have already begun to think about the next phase of work.

The relocation of the administrative operations to the new offices and staffroom will allow for some of the oldest parts of the existing school to be demolished to make way for other new facilities, including a kitchen and a dining hall. The existing kitchen is in a terrible state and replacement of it with a larger facility with energy-efficient stoves will allow for the introduction of a school-wide feeding programme, possibly from the start of the next school year in January 2021.

Furthermore, the current sanitation facilities, especially for primary pupils and for staff, are wholly inadequate and insufficient and are in desperate need of being replaced and/or added to.

These two projects, together with installation of further rainwater harvesting capacity, will be our next priorities going forward.