Jane, a bright young girl gave birth at 13. Early pregnancy and lack of social supports led to Jane leaving school. Jane is just one of the 100's of children in Ngong who forgo Kenya's free primary education due to challenge. Jane now searches a local dump for metal to generate income: there she met Rose, a Tatua Organiser working in Ngong. Rose is using Tatua's community organising model to develop a community initiative that will send Jane and 100's of other children back to school.
Primary school education in Kenya is provided by the government but a large portion of those living in poverty fail to attend school. Donors from the outside attempt to help by sending school fees to cater for education. Though this motivates a few children to attend school it fails to address the larger challenge that communities living in poverty do not claim privileges provided by the government. As a result, individuals and such communities continue to experience poverty in great numbers.
Tatua works with communities by providing opportunities for the local community to join in the creation of solutions to Kenya's poverty crisis. We envision a poverty-free Kenya in which local leaders imagine and create initiatives that address the root causes of poverty. Tatua is moving Kenya towards this reality through the teaching and modeling of effective community organizing. Be the Change organizers form leadership teams in communities that will start such initiatives around child poverty.
Unlike traditional sponsorship the Ngong Initiative reaches far past Jane because it depends on the local community. Rose is working with 21 local leaders to build five teams committed to identifying truant kids and working with parents, corporations, community organisations and the Kenyan Government to return them to school. Together they will build a initiative that returns Jane to school and transforms Ngong into a united community with structures to handle other challenges in the future.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
