Bridge Educational Gaps for 300 Girls in Kenya.

Dear esteemed supporters.

As we approach the end of another successful and wonderful year, allow me to share with you some of our success stories. 

First and foremost, on your behalf, GENCAD's Trustees and our volunteers, I had the pleasure of wishing success our 2016 candidates for the Kenya Primary School Examination (KCPE). 36 girls who are part of our intervention  project have completed primary education and we are very confident that they will perform well and secure admission to secondary school next year.  It's our long-held conviction that these wonderful girls who have braved the many challenges in their lives and worked so hard to complete primary education will not be denied secondary education because of lack of school fees. We are determined with your support to ensure that they will transition to secondary education come 2017 and stay for the full four years. We thank you for your continuous support.

The intervention we are providing is really making a difference to the achievements of our girls. For example, at Elwak Girls Primary School, 75% of the girls have improved in their school's ranking since the beginning of the intervention. Remarkably, at AL Uweis Primary the performance is even more impressive 88%.

In addition to the whole cohorts performance, our project coordinator this term looked into individual cases. One such example is Khadija, a class 7 pupil at AL Uweis Primary School. Her family lives nearby the school. The local community practices polygamous marriage and large family. Khadija's family isn't any different. Her father is married to two wives and has twelve children including her. Khadija’s father Abdi is a livestock keeper while her mother and her step-mother are both housewives. They live in a small Somali hut without basic amenities. When GENCAD was introduced  to Khadija's school, she was identified by the school administrations as a beneficiary. Main reason why she was chosen is because she is always hardworking in school and also needy. Since Khadija joined GENCAD program in class six (6), the school's head teacher, Mr. Hasow, reported significant  improvement in her performance. Looking at the school's performance data will explain why Mr. Hasow is jubilant about Khadija's performance.  Since the beginning of the intervention lessons, her class position ranking has increased by 43%, while scores in Maths and Kiswahili increased by 8% and 16% respectively. There was a drop of 7% in the Kiswahili performance. Overall, we are very excited for Khadija's improved performance and indeed the rest of the students.

It's because the evident targetable improvement we see on daily basis that we are so  proud of our program.

Once again, thank you all our esteemed donors and supporters and hopefully, in our next report, I will be able to share with you the results for the 36 girls who have completed primary education this year.  I hope that you will continue lending us your support to ensure that transition to secondary school.

Please visit our facebook page and our website to learn more about our programs.

Thank and May God Bless you. 

Dear friends

Our intervention programme at Elwak Girls Primary School and Al-Uweis Primary School is going on well. The project activities have continued to attract the attention of Elwak Town's residents. The number of volunteers willing to help has increased in the past three months.

The recent outbreak of dengue and Chikungunya fever in Mandera County has affected the entire population. High teacher and pupils absences during the intervention lessons and normal school days have had a negative  impact on the programme this term. However, we have managed to run the intervention lessons uninterrupted albeit high level of absences. Despite the many cases of pupils and teacher absences as  a result of the outbreak,  pupils performance in both the termly and continuous assessment tests have continued to improve thanks to the determination shown by the  teachers and project staff who have pushed themselves to come to lessons at times using a walking stick ( Chikungunya affects joints making walking difficult). We are proud of them all.  

In addition to the ongoing remedial lessons, both schools have received a set of class readers for their mini -libraries which will be used during literacy week starting next term. We hope to boost the school libraries with more books to be shipped to Kenya in December. 

The revision preparation for this years' standard 8 candidates ( end of primary cycle) is going well and we have a lot of hope their performance in the final exam will be better than the previous years. The scholarship GENCAD provided to the 8 girls who transitioned to secondary school last year have increased the motivation level for the current pupils to do well in their studies. GENCAD is determined to ensure that lack of school fees will not act as a barrier for our girls to the transition to secondary school.  

I happy to report also, the environmental club at Elwak Girls Primary is going strong. The dedication shown by the pupils to look after their trees, watering them and keeping away animals from eating the trees is quite amazing. The trees are doing well and hopefully within a couple of years, the school compound will be transformed thanks to the pupils and teachers at the school.

I hope you will continue extending your support  to our project.

Thank you.