Education Kenya Project #26432

Educating rural Kenyan children via MP3 technology

by Lifeline Energy

Project Report | Jul 26, 2017
Moving forward in Kenya

By Bridget Schramm | Logistics Manager

Rural school in Marsabit County

Audio Learning in Kenya (ALIK) aims to provide educational support to pastoral and nomadic communities in far northern Kenya. It’s a 2017 project and often, like new projects, it is taking longer to implement than we had initially planned. This is what has happened in Kenya.

That said, we still have a lot to report. Kristine Pearson spent most of June in Kenya working with our local partner, HODI, moving the project forward.

We met with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD), as they are the providers of the audio school lessons. KICD is a department within the Ministry of Education whose core function is to conduct research and develop curriculum for learners under university level. KICD also made a formal evaluation of the Lifeplayer and have approved it for use in schools. The Lifeplayer had been accepted by the Ministry of Education in Marsabit County already, however, we wanted to gain the blessing from the national ministry.

Some years back when we were working in the Dadaab refugee camps in eastern Kenya near the Somali border, we worked with a local NGO called PAJAN, which stands for Pastoralists Journalists Network. They used our Lifeline radios to provide information access to Somali refugee women in the camps, as well as women in host communities. We met with them again this trip as they are keen to use our Lifeplayers for educational outreach in their own pastoral communities. Like other pastoral communities in Kenya, they struggle to hire and retain qualified teachers.

The biggest hurdle it looks like is getting the Lifeplayer declared as an educational tool by the national government in Kenya to avert paying high import duties and VAT on the units. Althought they will be used solely for educational and informational use, this process is time consuming. We have people helping us nagivate this process, but with the upcoming elections in August, we might not see any movement until September.

We wish we had more concrete information to share, but the project is progressing, just slowly at the moment. We’ve kept all our stakeholders informed.

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Apr 25, 2017
Audio Learning in Kenya - a much needed project

By Kristine Pearson | Project Leader

Lifeline Energy and our local Kenyan partner, Horn of Africa Development Initiative (HODI), also a GlobalGiving-vetted NGO, are working together to formally launch this initiative in the next few months. Audio Learning in Kenya (ALIK) will reintroduce audio-based learning opportunities via our Lifeplayer MP3s for under-resourced schools in Kenya’s arid north in Marsabit County.

Nearly 90% of the county’s population is nomadic or pastoral, which creates massive challenges for education delivery. Only an estimated 10% of women are literate, while literacy is higher, yet still low for men, at around 60%. Formal schooling came late to this part of Kenya.

There are only 123 public primary schools and 16 secondary schools in the entire County, which is more than twice the size of Maryland. Maryland’s population is huge at 6 million in comparison to Marsabit’s 300,000 inhabitants. However, the average class size in primary school is 54 pupils in Marsabit County, where as its just 22 in Maryland.

Schools are woefully under-resourced, lacking classrooms, equipment, books, supplies, water, toilets, and properly qualified teachers, especially in science, mathematics and English. Teaching at most schools would be considered a hardship post; the vast majority of teachers are men. Many children have to walk long distances to schools; some up to 10 kilometers each way. Many children don’t even attend school as there are none anywhere near their village or compound.

These are only some of the reasons why the ALIK initiative is so urgently needed. The onus is on HODI and Lifeline, in collaboration with the local and national Ministry of Education to identify the right content for young learners, and also for teachers. There are six tribal languages common in this part of Kenya, on top of the national languages of Swahili and English. Pre-school and early grades are conducted in local languages and there is severe shortage of local language teachers. Audio school lessons which were once broadcast on radio, already exist in the Ministry of Education.

Our aim is to implement ALIK in the near future, starting that are most in need and have the fewest teachers. Lifeline believes so strongly in the importance of this project, it will soon be opening an office in Nairobi.

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