Improve education for 2,500 children in Kenya

We are proud to bring you our latest project report with news of our recent activities on the ground in Kenya:

• The drought situation continues in our project area, although heavy rain in the last couple of days has brought some immediate relief after months without rainfall. We have been continuing to deliver bowsers of clean water for drinking and cooking to schools where it is needed and our lunch programme remains a vital lifeline for the majority of the 2,750 children that we feed each day. Thankfully, food prices have stabilised in the last couple of months, having climbed by up to 60% since May last year;

• All seven of our partner schools are now benefitting from a permanent electricity supply after connection to the mains supply at Kisimenyi Primary was finally made possible by the recent extension of grid power lines close to the school. In each of our partner schools, we have equipped at least the staffroom and offices with power;

• We now fund the salaries of 17 teachers across our partner schools, ranging from 2 to 4 teachers per school;

• We have begun planning for the redevelopment of our proposed eight partner school at Mkamenyi Primary. The scale of the challenge at Mkamenyi is immense - buildings without windows and doors, children sitting on bare classroom floors, and a chronic lack of food and water - but we are determined to use our experience and expertise to solve these problems and to create a better today and tomorrow for the many hundreds of children at the school, however we don't anticipate being in a position to start work much before the end of 2018;

• Following completion of building works at our seventh partner, Ngambenyi Primary, we have been working to equip the school with educational resources. Earlier in the year we supplied 450 textbooks at a ratio of one per pupil and now, to complement those, we have supplied a further 450 supplementary books (including revision guides, workbooks and dictionaries) as well as 900 reading books in both English and Swahili. We have done all this for less than £5,000 ($6,800);

• Although our building programme has been relatively quiet of late as funding has been in short supply we have still managed to complete a number of projects including: our second staff house, which will accommodate 8-10 teachers at Kisimenyi Primary; a new kitchen at Makwasinyi Primary, which now provides a significantly enhanced working environment for the cooks in which to produce lunch for the schools 400 pupils; and a new block of toilets and a washroom for the boys at Bungule Primary to replace some which collapsed earlier in the year.

• Looking ahead, the future of our feeding programme is secure until at least the end of this year, and we have a number of building projects scheduled to begin in the final quarter including a dining hall, classrooms and toilets.

We end this report with some feedback from a GlobalGiving representative who visited us in Kenya recently:

"African Promise is changing the lives of children in the Kasigau region of Kenya through their school improvement programs. The difference they make to these poorly equipped and financed primary schools is life-changing for the children whose education is transformed through their work. You need no further testament to African Promise's impact than the universal praise they receive from the communities themselves."

Michael Rothwell, GlobalGiving In-the-Field Traveller

After an absence of almost a year, we are pleased to report that the rains have finally returned to our project area, bringing much-needed relief to our schools and the wider community. However, these remain challenging and uncertain times.

Despite the arrival of the rains, food prices continue to soar in the face of on-going shortages and high demand, with implications for our school lunch programme. For staples that are grown domestically, such as beans and maize, we are paying between 45% and 55% more than just a year ago. In an effort to manage costs and ensure we can continue to live within our means, we have had to take the difficult decision to reduce the size of each meal. Although this will have an impact on the children, it does at least mean that we can continue to provide all 2,700+ pupils in our partner schools with a daily, term-time meal. These are permanent changes and we have not been able to rule out making further reductions on a temporary basis, but we hope that it will help us to navigate our way through this incredibly challenging period. If you would like to support our feeding programme and help us maintain this vital lifeline for the remainder of the year and beyond then you can donate via our project page on GlobalGiving at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/feed-school-children-in-kenya/

In better news, with water tanks full and other supplies replenished, and water no longer being rationed to the extent it was a couple of months ago, our building programme is ramping up after a relatively quiet few months. We are close to completing the second phase of our six-year £250,000 redevelopment at Kismenyi Primary School, with the final element - a staff house - in its final stages and almost ready for occupation. Elsewhere, we have begun a long overdue project to build an eco-kitchen at Makwasinyi Primary of the sort that we have already built at all but one other of our partner schools. This will significantly improve delivery of the lunch programme at the school. Meanwhile, we have recently completed the upgrade and extension of the pre-school at Kiteghe Primary, including a new block of toilets, and we are now in the process of creating a new playground area. We have immediate plans to start the construction of four classrooms at various schools in order to accommodate increasing enrolments.

Although construction work at Ngambenyi, our latest partner school, was finished some months ago now, we continue with some work to fit out and furnish the school. We have recently repaired and reinstated a solar system to provide lighting and power in a number of classrooms, whilst the school has taken advantage of the recent rains to accelerate a tree planting and beautification programme, which is being led by a very dedicated teacher determined to further uplift the appearance of the school and the surrounding environment.

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"All is well with us at Ngambenyi. The school community is enjoying the facilities and services you put in place. God bless African Promise."

Joram Mwanguo, teacher at Ngambenyi Primary

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In February, we began funding two teaching posts at the one partner school where we had yet to provide this type of support, taking to 16 the total number of teaching positions that we now finance across all our seven partner schools. This is equivalent to two school’s worth of extra teachers, where government-employed teachers rarely number more than 7 or 8, whatever the size of the school.

All-in-all it has been a positive quarter but as always, especially as a small charity, we exist on a knife-edge so we are hugely grateful to our GlobalGiving donors and community, especially those that are supporting our work on an on-going basis.

We will end this report with a message from the Local Education Officer in our project area, who posted the following comment to our Facebook page recently:

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"We thank AP and its partners for helping to build schools, to provide water & meals, and to make families better!"

Emily Kituri, project area Education Officer

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We are proud to bring you our latest project report with news of many exciting developments:

• Our lunch programme now provides a daily school day meal to 2,700 children across our seven partner schools as well as three ‘feeder’ pre-schools, into which we extended the programme from February. As communities in Kenya, including ours, reel from the effects of a devastating drought this is in absolutely vital lifeline.

• We are shipping in bowsers of clean water so there are supplies of clean water for drinking and cooking. Without this, most schools would have no water because of the prolonged, year-long drought. To date we have delivered about 150,000 litres of fresh water whilst we have also increased rainwater storage capacity across our partner schools by about 25% over the last few weeks to improve drought resilience in the future.

• We now fund - in full - the salaries of 16 additional trained teachers (at least one in each school).

• We recently completed an 18-month long redevelopment of our seventh partner school, Ngambenyi Primary School.

• Elsewhere, our building teams have been busy over the last few months constructing classrooms, staff housing, toilets and playgrounds.

• We have earmarked a likely eighth partner school - Mkamenyi Primary School - which desperately needs the benefit of our expertise and experience. The school has been on our radar for a while but especially so in recent months since a head teacher from one of our existing partner schools - with whom we have a very good relationship - was transferred to Mkamenyi. We hope to begin work on what will be a major redevelopment sometime in 2018.

"It has been a blessing working with you. I am proud of the many projects that we have done together while I have been headteacher of Kiteghe Primary. Long live African Promise.”

Elias Mzugula, outgoing headteacher of Kiteghe Primary, December 2016

Links:

• Read more about our development at Ngambenyi Primary.
• Kenya President declares drought a national disaster
• New Chairman reports on first visit to Kasigau

What an incredible and eventful year 2016 has been for the charity. Here are just a few of our highlights from on the ground and from our partner schools in Kenya:

• Completion of an 18-month long £110,000 ($135,500) redevelopment of a seventh partner school;
• Completion of work on our 75th classroom build/renovation;
• Delivery of nearly half a million meals to the 2,500+ pupils across our partner schools;
• One of our partner schools placed third in the national finals of the schools drama festival;
• Launch of a Breakfast Club for the most disadvantaged pupils;
• Increase in the number of teaching positions we fund to 11.

Away from Kenya, it has also been a successful year for the charity on the fundraising front.

• Annual income of circa £165,000 ($203,000);
• Launch of a fundraising events programme in the UK including an inaugural Christmas Carol Service/Concert and places in major sportive events such as the London Marathon;
• Launch of a fully responsive website;
• A visit to meet US-based supporters of the charity;
• Participation in three donation matching campaigns (including two on GlobalGiving)

We look ahead to next year with a great deal of anticipation and excitement. Our plans for 2017 and beyond include:

• a further £250,000 ($308,000) investment in the physical infrastructure of our partner schools, mainly on classrooms, staff housing and dining halls;
• the continuation of our lunch programme;
• an increase to at least 14 in the number of teaching positions we fund;
• increasing our support of educational and extra-curricular activities;
• possible expansion into further partner schools subject to funding

Thank you for your support in 2016 and very best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy Nwe Year.

So far, 2016 is living up to its promise as an exciting and landmark year for African Promise.

In Kenya we are set to compete a major redevelopment of our seventh partner school in the next two weeks, bringing to an end a 15-month long project which has seen us comprehensively upgrade the school. Meanwhile we have active building projects in four of our other six partner schools, including the extension and upgrade of two pre-school units, as well as the construction of two primary classrooms, a five unit teachers house and a modern kitchen with energy saving stoves at one of the two schools currently without such a facility.

“I visited Ngambenyi late this week and it was amazing! Nobody expected that the school would be transformed this much. I believe it will make a big change to the pupils…they had suffered so much before.”

Mercy Marigo, former volunteer teacher at Ngambenyi Primary

Our feeding programme has expanded with the extension of the lunch programme to the 130 pupils at Ngambenyi and the launch of a breakfast club at Kiteghe Primary. All-in-all we now provide a daily breakfast of nutritious fortified porridge to around 30 of the most disadvantaged pupils, and a daily lunch of hearty maize (or rice) and beans to the more than 2,500 children across our partner schools.

In August we sent around 100 pupils from two schools on a two-day educational trip to the coastal city of Mombasa to visit sites of historic and cultural interest, as well as the airport and the beach! These trips are intended to inspire the children, many of whom would not get the opportunity to visit areas outside of the isolated communities in which they live. Indeed at least four students returned from this trip proclaiming that they now have ambitions of working in an airport or being a pilot!

Away from Kenya we have today launched our brand new mobile responsive website which we hope will offer visitors to our site a much improved user experience whichever platform or device they are using to browse the site. This much-needed project has been undertaken for us pro-bono by a small web design company and is another example of how we are increasingly benefiting from the donation of goods and services in kind and not just monetary gifts.