KEEPING AKILI GIRLS IN SCHOOL THROUGH SCHOLARSHIPS

Dear Friends,

It has been a wonderful semester for us, thanks to your steadfast support. The 15 students in our scholarship program brought their report cards to the ROF office at the end of the semester. With your support, these girls joined high school for the first time in their lives in August 2021 having graduated from Akili Preparatory School in April. The report cards showed how they had performed in school for the past 3 months. All the 15 girls were ranked in the top 10 in their respective classes with 95% of them scoring a mean grade of A.  One of the beneficiaries is a 15 year old girl/orphan who was able to join St. Mark’s Obambo Mixed Secondary School in Kisumu. Her father passed on 15 years ago, 2 weeks before she was born. A 2nd born in a family of 5, her single mother was unable to support her and her siblings forcing her to visit and stay with her grandmother in Kanyawegi village. Since joining Akili School 5 years ago, she has been able to access free quality education with the organization meeting all her needs of 3 meals a day, stationery/school supplies, uniforms, sanitary pads, mentorship etc to allow her to concentrate in her studies without worrying about how her needs will be met. 

She told us that when she grows up, she would like to be a doctor to treat the sick and help the needy in her community. Apart from academics, she enjoys playing football and listening to music. She has been through a lot of challenges and has always wanted to lift her mother and siblings out of poverty when she succeeds in her education. Since 2020, her greatest challenge has been to see her mother bedridden in hospital where she stayed for two and a half years while suffering from throat cancer. She says that she went through a very  difficult time seeing her mother lose her ability to provide for her other siblings. Different thoughts crossed her mind. For a long time, she couldn’t concentrate in class and thought about her often. She was preparing for her high school entry exams and the teachers and staff at Akili school provided psychosocial support that helped her to overcome her struggles. 

Despite this, she passed her exams scoring 339 marks out of the possible 500 in April 2021. Her mother was very proud of her and encouraged her to keep working hard in school. She really wanted her mom to hold on and see her succeed in life and help her family. Unfortunately, she succumbed to throat cancer in August 2021, only  a few days after she joined high school. Despite her massive loss, the challenges that continue to come her way  and the responsibilities and pressure that comes with being the only hope for her family, she has remained focussed and registered a stellar performance in her first year of high school. She scored a mean grade of A and straight As in Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology and ranked 10th out of 259 students in her class. We are very grateful to you and all our supporters who give so generously to keep girls like her in school and allow them to focus on their studies and simply be girls. We are doing our best to see her stay in school and work towards realizing her dream of being a doctor.

As we continue to transition these wonderful girls to high school, our major challenge is to keep them in school for 3 semesters in a year, and ultimately 4 years of high school education. $10 buys stationery and sanitary pads while tution/school fees costs $100 per year to keep a girl in a day secondary school in Kenya. $500 can sponsor 5 girls for an entire school year. Any donation of $10 or more helps us to realize this goal. 

A generous anonymous donor on GlobalGiving Org has agreed to match new monthly donations at 100% through the end of the year, or until funds run out. Therefore, donors who set up a new monthly donation to a project will have their first donation matched up to $200! For example, if you set up a new $25 monthly donation, GlobalGiving Org will donate an additional $25 to the project one time.

We would be very much grateful if we could get a few monthly donors to provide us with a regular/predictable source of funds that we can use to budget and support girls like her and allow them to complete 4 years of high school education. If you are able to, please consider donating to keep the Akili Girls in School. You can also consider donating to  our girls scholarship fund campaign or share these links https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/theakiligirlsscholarshipfund/Short link: http://goto.gg/52629 with friends.

Thank you so much for your continued support. God bless you.