LITERACY FOR 100 GIRLS THROUGH GARDENING & SPORTS

Dear friends,

The Literacy Garden is a beehive of activity! With your generous contributions we have started the first phases of construction of the literacy garden. We also secured 2600 GBP and Tenteleni Org UK and $1000 from our volunteer/supporter Ali Osborne and have already started construction of the mini library. Working with students from Chalmers University Sweden, we finished designing anfd building our first pretend play station; the pretend  hospital. We have plans to add a pretend play laboratory, supermarket and kitchen. These practical learning spaces will go along way in helping our girls improve their vocabulary through pretend play.

Our Volunteer Nicole Beverly of Rama Road Elementary, NC, USA visited and took our girls through letter writing sessions which were shared with her students back at home.

Our literacy Instuctor Rose, has been doing an incredible job piloting storytelling and poetry sessions with the girls. University of Edinburgh students have been helping research barries to female literacy and empowerment for rural girls. This will better inform how we can improve the literacy program going forward.

Kendra Nicolai and Josh from Denver US just arrived to start piloting write our world program. This program involves our girls writing stories about their culture and issues they care about and using a book creater to publish them online and sharing with other children from all over the world. This not only gives marginalized rural girls a voice to talk about issues that affect them but also confidence to become published authors at a budding age.

We are looking forward to building a basketball court and finishing the rollerskating paths so that we can run our sports program for leadership development alongside the literacy sessions.

Your partnership has seen us achieve so much and we can't thank you enough for your incredible generosity. It has been so fulfilling to see us dream for a literacy garden to empower rural girls and see it come to life simply because you believe in our dream. We still need about $6000 to complete our playground (mainly basketball court and rollerskating paths). Every donation, small or big goes along way.

Thank you so much for walking this journey with us. We are excited to complete it and empower many more marginalized rural girls.

Asante sana and God bless you all!

Dear friends,

The rains are finally back and we have been busy fencing the garden (to protect our crops/trees from stray goats) and planting maize, beans and vegetables in the garden. We are also cleaing the compund and adding more holes to plant trees which will provide shade in the garden in the future .We bought 18 chain links and have fenced the better part of the garden. We only need 8 more chain links to fence the entire garden. Each costs $25.

This week, 6 students from chalmers university Sweden (reality studio 2018) visited the garden and are going to work with us to design our pretend playground which will include a basketball court and roller skating paths. We have also made our first order of roller skates through our voluntee John Freeman from Ieland who will be deliveing them in Kenya in May when he visits. Each roller skate costs $32 to $40. We thank you so much for your generous donation that has enabled us to do so much at the garden.

We look forward to continue this partnership and together build decent playground and garden for our girls and promote lifeskills that will help them for a lifetime.

Thank you