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