Improve the education of 2,000 students in Kenya

Hello supporters!

It has been an incredible year. In fact, it’s been the best year in Hopeful Africa’s history. And the best way to top it all off is a trip to Kenya. From May 18th through June 1st, seven Hopeful Africa supporters traveled to Kenya. While there, they visited partner schools, funded programs, talked to community members, and met with students, teachers, and administrators. They also had the opportunity to go on a safari and visit a Maasai village. The team blogged everyday about their adventures and those blogs can be found at http://hopefulafrica.org/blog/. 

More to the point of this project report, however, is what they were able to do for and with the partner schools while they were there, the progress made because of your support. Here are the highlights of the investments and announcements:

• $9000+ Invested at the schools, this brings our total program support to be $85,000 since we started.
• 19 teachers will be supported through the Teacher Support program, up from 11 teachers.
• 62 students will receive high school scholarships through the Student Sponsorship program, up from 20 students.
• 1000+ textbooks and library books were provided to five schools through our School Investment program. Total books provided are 5000+
• 7 computers and a computer lab were installed at one of the schools bringing the total to 27 computers provided to date.
• 2000+ students at the seven partner schools will be benefiting from all the programs support.

If you want a better idea of where Hopeful Africa’s partner schools are located, where your donations are having such an awesome impact, please visit www.hopefulafrica.org/about-us/where-we-work/. But to get a real sense of the communities, we highly recommend you read the Kenya Summer ‘15 blog posts. You can read Arianna’s musings on the ceremony at Ogilgei Primary School during which they “all rejoiced in song and dance and had no other cares in the world or in Kenya in that very moment”. Or Anna talking about the time “The District Officer came in to talk with us about how beneficial the computer lab has been for not just the school, but the whole district. They have been working on training other teachers throughout the district in how to use the computers, and stressed how much of a difference Hopeful Africa has made.”

On the trip, the team collected piles of data from the schools to analyze the impact of Hopeful Africa and get an idea of how to move forward. We’re beyond excited to pour over that data and report the findings to you in our next project report. I know, data being exciting? Seems weird. But that information will give us invaluable insight into Hopeful Africa’s partner schools and communities. And that will lead to smarter and better impacts. We hope you’ll stay tuned to find out just how your support has made and will continue to make a difference.

Thanks,

Kyle Upchurch
Executive Director, Hopeful Africa

P.s. I wanted to mention that we have increased this project's goal from $30,000 to $35,000 because we have some more work to do! You have all been so generous this past year and helped us reach the initial mark. But we figure now is as good a time as any to push for even more impact. There is another bonus day with matching funds coming up in July, so be on the lookout!