Support Quality Schooling of 250 Kids in Nguluni

Dear friends,

Ten years ago we started intervening in the lives of vulnerable children and families, wth the aim of helping their parents stabilize socio-economically as their children received an education.

We started out with seventeen children in pre school stage.

Ten years later, all the original children we started out with have successfully completed primary level education. Through various challenges, false starts, unexpected successes, internal turmoils, parental instabilities, political upheavals- we have experienced the smell of primal success.

The average age of these students was 16 years, with the oldest being 18 years of age and the youngest being 15 years of age. The transition age at primary level would normally be 14 years of age. This means that we have successfully transitioned children who would otherwise have dropped out of school without our intervention. The graduating students will now be able to transition either into secondary school or into youth polytechnics and other tertiary schools.

Some of the key statistics are as follows:

• Of the 15 students, 5 were girls (33%); 10 were boys (67%)
• One girl was pregnant during her last year in school- giving birth to a baby girl in October, a month before the final exam.
• She was supported through counselling and was still able to study and sit her final exams.

There were  5 other students who had interim periods at the school and whose benefactors were later able to afford higher fees. The total of students transitioning out of primary school because of direct and indirect intervention with the help of your support comes to  20, 13 boys and 7 girls, a completion rate of 117%.

From little boys and girls to young men and women, your faithfulness over the years has borne the fruits of dogged determination to give all children every chance.

Thank you, for making this possible. 

It has been an amazing 5 months.

With 185 children in school getting an education, this is something to be proud about.

The children are getting 2 meals a day, 5 days a week in partnership with Caring for Kenyan Kids. 

We are currently doing a literacy assessment to determine the level of literacy of the students. The assessment are two fold: one is to determine progress of students who have been at the school; the other is to determine lvele of literacy of new students who have recently joined.

This will help us determine how to proceed with them during our Reading Intervention Program 

During the assessment I asked one of our students called Alex if he knows how to read. His response was almost disheartening. He said to me." I don't know how to read."

After the assessment I was elated- because though he had said he did not know how to read- Alex could read beyond what he thought and what I thought as well. You see he had come in 3 months previously- in February and did not know how to read at all. 

Alex owes it to the teachers, and to you...that he can now begin to understand his lessons. And can read. His score was like this:-

He read 263 words; He had 33 errors. He took about 5 minutes. Ths may not be much but given where he was at the start of the term, this is great progress. Thanks to you partner.

Let's give more children the needed skills- move them from Basic literacy to functional literacy.

And because these children are in school, some have been able to develop their skills; On JUne 2nd will be the District Athetics Championships and two of our students will be competing.

June 1st, we had a local family and friends visit the school with learning resources- the event falling on the day Kenya celebrates self rule was dubbed "Freedom to Learn". The children received reading, writing, revision packs, food packs, sanitary towels and mentoring and counselling.

Thank you for making change happen. 

Dear friends,

Acres of Mercy has reached a new milestone! 180

180 children are being helped through our programs now and there could have been more. Talking to one of our teaching staff last week, she said "We had to turn away many more children because we do not have the space to take them in." Most of the children we took in were from public schools. To paint the picture of part of the problem you and I are working to solve we have children who have gone through pre-school, class 1, two, three, four, and five but yet CANNOT READ. Because no one cared enough to teach them well and their parents could not afford extra money for the remedial classes sold to them in public schools.

The teacher was right. Resources are yet few. Our classes are yet unfinished and we are short of teaching staff, but the program still continues with the little we get from friends like you. And we are making progress on them as you will see from the photos from January 2015.

With a little more extra giving we can complete four other classes within the year. I will keep you posted of how we can do this through globalgiving campaigns coming up. This quarter I joined their Online Fundraising Academy to grow in how to raise more people and resources to make a difference together in the lives of these children.

Thank you for making it happen each month and please consider additional giving or recurring giving to help make more impact and reach more children.

Dear friends and partners,

The year is 25 days away from coming to an end.

Throughout the year you have been steadfast in seeing us move towards making this project a success. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for the great work, the support and the giving that has gone on all through 2014.

Though we are yet to complete the extra class that was mentioned in the last report we have managed to keep hope alive. 

We are yet to re-route the electrcity and complete the wiring. The donations that came through since the last report totalled $120. 

We used the amounts to complete part of teachers pay as we wanted to keep their motivation up. The teachers ensured that at least 173 students completed a part of their schooling this year.

As we celebrate Christmas and New Year let us consider supporting the organization by telling friends more about it and the work we do; by thinking through ideas that could bring in earned income, e.g donating professional services; etc.

Thank you once again for your continued support.

• 2013-2014 Annual Report (PDF)