Feed 300 poor children in urban Mombasa

Despite no-one from the UK being able to visit Kenya the school is running well. Thanks to the wonders of technology we continue to keep in close touch with our school and have been able to carry out staff training remotely. Our beautiful new school, completed at last in time for the Kenyan new school year in January 2021, is a source of great pride in the local community, All staff and children are together in one building now and we are no longer paying for rented premises. The teachers are working very hard to help the children catch up on time lost during the lengthy school closure because of Covid. So far our school remains Covid free.

One of the main government focuses for education in Kenya is the introduction of an appraisal system for teachers. Despite staff training being carried out only remotely our teachers are continuing to grow in confidencce and are keen to learn. Irene, our Headteacher, tells us that staff with particular skills have been passing on those skills to other staff members during training sessions. Charlie, a UK Trustee and middle school teacher, has carried out appraisal training and assisted Irene. Irene is already preparing the appraisal document ready for the introduction of the scheme in 2022. We are delighted that so much progress has been made despite the difficulties of the last two years. None of this could have been achieved without you and it is the kindness and generosity of donors that will enable us to continue educating our children and improve their life chances.

In an attempt to make up for time lost during school closure the Kenyan government has changed school holidays. Instead of the very long Summer and Christmas breaks there is a one week break every few weeks throughout the year.. Additionally, as our 2020 Nursery class missed most of their first year in school, we now have two Nursery classes, one for the 2020 group and one for the younger group who were ready to join us in 2021. This and the extra time the school is open has impacted on our already high cost for the feeding programme for this and the coming year. We want our children to thrive and so be able to take full advantage of the high quality education we provide. It is only because of our donors that we have been able to respond appropriateely, especially though recent difficult times. Thank you so much to Jude Bellingham for his continued support and thank you to all of you who have helped us not only to achieve our goals but to rise to the extra challenges we have faced. We couldn't have done it without you! Please continue to support us.

Great news! Thanks to some generous donations made to Jude Bellingam’s fundraising page and the amazing people who make regular donations we have now managed to raise all the money needed for the feeding programme until the end of this year. Raising the £18,000 needed to feed our children each year is always a worry so it's good to know that the prgramme is secure until December.

Other news from school is that our children went back to school in January, our 14 year olds took their KCPE, we were visited and considered Covid safe and as you can see everyone still wears masks with no mention of changing this! The Kenyan government, whilst having many faults, has tried very hard to keep its people safe in every way it can. It had planned to vaccinate all school staff as a matter of urgency but unfortunately it did not get the expected vaccine. Despite that the number of cases in Mombasa has been very low and so far no-one at our school has caught the virus. 

The feeding programme also helped us to achieve other things in school. With a full stomach children can concentrate and this lead to other benefits as we had pleasing results in our KCPE (Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education). The oldest children had been away from school for eight months having returned to school two months earlier than the rest of the school. Previously our KCPE results had given a mean score of B- when a C is considered a good grade by the Kenyan government. This year our teachers were so disappointed that the mean grade was a C+ but I thought that was pretty amazing. Rich children in Kenya had had online lessons whilst those of our children who chose to collect it were given homework, which was marked, but no teaching. Just as in the UK it was the poorest to suffered most. We had of course fed 78 families during the pandemic so that at least they did not starve. 

Then, like many people during this pandemic, we have used Zoom, Skype and WhatsApp to keep in touch. In many ways we have been much closer to what is going on than we would have been in normal circumstances. Whilst school was closed we had weekly Skype meetings with the headteacher and even now we meet regularly on Zoom. In fact Zoom has now become a huge benefit as the teachers receive training. Our P1 teachers (qualification is for 6 - 14 year olds) are being trained by Charlie, one of our trustees and our ECD teachers (qualification is for 4 - 8 year olds) are receiving training from Christine a volunteer. Both are highly qualified teachers and are making a real difference.

And the response from the teachers? ‘We are very fortunate to get this training and we really appreciate it.' ' It is helping us to get good grades for the children.' ' It is really improving our teaching and it makes us know that Mustard Seed Project is still thinking about us.'

Finally, a big thank you to all of you who have fundraised, made donations or set up regular donations. Our children and staff could not succeed without your support.

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