2022 has launched with library teams visiting schools, teachers thoughtfully participating in professional development sessions, and students running excitedly to the Learning Resource Center for STEM classes. We have BIG plans for this year... our 20th anniversary.
Before we provide updates for 2022, we wanted to take a moment to share some highlights from 2021. Despite the pandemic, our programs continued to thrive in our quest to break down barriers to education while providing robust enrichment and empowerment programs for students, teachers, and parents. Some of our 2021 accomplishments included:
More important than the numbers, in 2021 we saw students, teachers and parents excited about reading, teachers shifting from the rote methodology of teaching to creating an atmosphere of engaged learning, and parents excited to be learning how to support their children in school while also being introduced to income generation projects. We invite you to peruse our 2021 Highlights be clicking HERE.
Staff member Monicah shared, "Seeing Expanding Horizon club members lead a read aloud activity during the community service day at the Wamunyu Special school was a great milestone as they used to be so shy and afraid to read." Intern Rael reflected, "When conducting a Wings Poa training session at Kikaso Primary School, I loved how girls openly shared the problems they were experiencing in regard to menstruation while asking good questions." Danson, our bus driver, commented, "I am glad that the library program is going so well. It's exciting to see the children being able to borrow books."
All of our accomplishments are as a result of donors like you who are supporting our work to strengthen education in rural Kenya. We will continue to provide updates of our work throughout the year and we invite you to follow us on social media to see our activities on a daily basis. Thank you for making our story possible.
Happy 2022! We are thrilled that in our 20th Anniversary year that our LRC Annex will be opening! Construction work slowed during the holidays, but now the craftsmen are back on the job and doing the finishing touches on the building. The architect and contractor are confident that we will be moving into the new building by mid-February. Our staff is working on furniture lay-out and plans for setting up all the special spaces including the Library and Maker Space.
We are especially excited that at the end of January/beginning of February that will will be receiving 20,000 books for our library from Books for Africa. This donation, coupled with our 10,000 book collection, means that our library will be filled with a wide range of books for the community to borrow.
We are also pleased to announce that we purchased an additional half acre piece of property adjacent to the LRC Annex. Currently we do not have plans for the property, but it provides us with future flexibility and ensures that a business that might be disruptive to our educational endeavors will not be our neighbor.
Accessibility is extremely important to us and the new building has a ramp that will allow for easier access to the library. We can hardly wait to see students, teachers, parents and community members using this new building. School will be on break in March and April and we already have plans to hold enrichment camps in the Maker Space and Library.
We thought as a donor to Kenya Connect, you would be interested to see our 2021 Highlights. Our comprehensive work would not be possible without donors like you. Thank you for being such a wonderful friend to Kenya Connect! We will be sending an update in February when we begin to move in!
This year's Reading Challenge King and Queen were crowned this month! The Kenya Connect Reading Challenge, now in its third year, challenges students to read 25 books to become a reading champion. With colorful guides created by students at Garrison Forest School, the students record the books they have read. This year's reading challenge theme was water, and in addition to providing space to list the books, the guides had fun water facts and word games and activities.
Jorma was crowned King for reading 166 books and is a student at the Wamunyu Junior Academy grade 5.
He shared, "I am very happy to be the King Reader in Kenya Connect Reading Challenge 2021. I attribute this to the effort and courage I got after participating in the crowning of the King and Queen reader in 2020. I promised myself to read many books in the next Challenge. Yes, I got it. My secret was after reading the two books that I used to check out, I would borrow more books from my friends. I loved reading books from the Magic Tree House series. My favorite title was the Dragon King in which Jack and Annie saved the book that was to be burned. I would urge my fellow learners to be checking out books and reading them. Did you know that I also enjoyed learning more about water from the Reading Challenge guide illustrations?"
Purity, a student from Kaliambeu in grade 8 is this year's Queen. She read 254 books and shared,
"I am very excited to be the Queen reader in the Kenya Connect Reading Challenge. Even though I used to check out two big volume books with my library card, I would go a step further to borrow more books from my classmates My favorite book was Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones .I learnt that you should not envy your friends. I would like to encourage other learners to read books and not to judge books by their covers. There are some books without pictures but when you read them you find that they are very interesting. Through reading many books during the Challenge, I have gained a lot of vocabulary. My fluency in English communication has improved and also my composition writing skills."
Our Librarian Esther shared this reflection, "The Reading Challenge has given learners a competitive opportunity and exciting time to read and interact with as many books as possible. It has actually spurred the love of books among many learners.The gifts that we are issuing are making learners to get more excited about reading books.They are a great motivation for learners to read more books in the coming Reading Challenge."
We are thrilled that 325 other students completed the challenge by reading 25+ books. All winners received a drawstring bag created by women in the community and screened by our staff. They also received some pencils too. This program is helping us to grow a community of readers.
We are deeply grateful to the students at Garrison Forest School for creating the Reading Challenge guides and the Henry E. Niles Foundation for support for the prizes. Donations from friends like you helped us build our School Library program and have helped stocked our library so students have a wide variety of books to read. We are deeply grateful.
Wamunyu is becoming, "The Village That Reads." Thank you for opening the joy, wonder and knowledge of books to our community. Wishing you and your family a peaceful and healthy holiday season.
"I wonder if the charcoal will filter the water?" Our budding scientists at Kituiu Primary School are working on filtering water using a simple filter design with cotton, clean sand, ground charcoal, and dirty water. Will the water come clean? Participating in LevelUp Village's Water Crisis class, these students are learning about how waterways become dirty and ways to filter and clean water to make it safe for drinking. Robert, a student at Kituiu shared, "During this term we have been learning about the water crisis through LevelUp Village. In this course I learned about water filtration. Teacher Patrick taught us how water seeps into the ground. I learned how to clean water and make it safe for drinking. What has excited me the most is the experiments we have been doing about water filtration and how underground water can be contaminated by human activity."
Hands-on learning solidifies concepts and requires students to use critical thinking and creativity to solve problems. They learn how to question, make hypotheses and learn from results. This enrichment program also connects Kituiu PS with a class in the United States. They share how their experiments worked and tell their peers about the challenge of clean water in Kenya.
As they study the challenges of keeping water clean in Kenya, they are hearing from their peers about water in the U.S. Being curious about where their peers live, students use a globe to see where the U.S. is in relation to Kenya and then finding the state of their new friend.
Our goal is to continue to support and expand these enrichment programs and to nurture future scientists! If you missed our virtual field trip, you can get a glimpse of our LevelUp Village partnership in this VIDEO.
These types of classes require us to have engaged staff members leading the programs and the appropriate supplies. Your donation is helping us to provide these enriching programs.
We are very excited to be participating in GlobalGivings "Move A Million" GivingTuesday incentive. We invite yout to mark your calendars for November 30th to make a gift to Kenya Connect. All gifts will be matched which means your gift will have a further impact.
As always, we are deeply grateful to you for supporting students like Robert, and the work of Kenya Connect.
One of the “strengths” of the LitClub curriculum is curiosity. In an effort to spark our LitClub students’ curiosity, we made arrangements over the October holiday break to take the students from the eight LitClubs of our Empowered Schools, Ngangani, Kisola, Maanzoni, and Sofia, for a field trip.
The students visited nearby Muthoki Lodge where they took a forest tour and learned about beekeeping, different types of trees and their herbal use, nursery making, and the hotel industry. The students were exposed to new ideas and felt motivated to become tree champions through planting trees and maintaining them. In addition, they felt excited to share with their parents about beekeeping.
During the Field Trip walk, you could see how curious and observant the kids were through their questions about the trees. LitClub Mentor Brian said, "I also noticed that most of them were knowledgeable about trees in their native language. During the walk, I was surprised when a student called me, 'Excuse me mentor Brian, look at that owl.' It took me some time before I could see where it was hiding on the tree and wondered how the child had seen the owl. Later on, after the forest tour, the students were courageous enough to volunteer and appreciate the tour guides for taking them through the forest and teaching them about the different uses of the farm."
After the visit to Muthoki Lodge, the students returned to the Kenya Connect Learning Resource Center. At the LRC, the students had a fun time participating in a Brain Break before proceeding to the enrichment activities. Students rotated through stations including using the KioKit tablets to read interactive books, creating bookmarks, and making jigsaw puzzles. The students enjoyed all the activities. After the activities, students had a moment for entertainment and others requested to do their own presentations that they had prepared.
These types of enrichment activities expand our students' worlds and opens them to new ideas and opportunities. Donors like you provide the funds so we can offer these types of school break activities.
Would you like to go on a FIELD TRIP TOO? On Wednesday, November 10th, we are hosting a VIRTUAL Field Trip to Kenya Connect that will include Chapati Making, a glimpse into our LUV classes, and a LitMom presentation. James Musyoka, Co-founder and Executive Director, will be LIVE from Kenya. You can register HERE for this FREE event.
As always, we are deeply grateful for your donation to Kenya Connect.
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