Got Matar Community Development Group (GMCDG) aims to provide low-cost decent housing for 30 very poor local rural families within 3 years. This will protect them from risks of building collapse, lack of security and bad sanitation and will enable them to live in dignity. IoT teaching staff and students who are being taught to be masons, plumbers, electricians, blacksmiths, and carpenters will gain valuable joint learning by doing experience through being retained as paid in-house apprentices.
Around 2000, our Got Matar community was ravaged by HIV/AIDS that killed many of its working-age population and left 30% of children as orphans mostly cared for by surviving grandparents. Many donors supported our course and we managed to create good educational opportunities for our remaining children, our former students are doing a lot to uplift the local economy but we are very worried that hundreds of families still live in deep poverty, visibly reflected in deplorable housing conditions.
We have decided to extend the IoT's practical training activities so that these have a direct impact on poverty while enriching students' learning through engaging them in real-life situations. For this, students will be retained as paid apprentices to work together on planning and building houses out of their normal study hours. To strengthen a sense of ownership, new house owners will be invited to help, to the extent they can, in building (e.g land clearing, painting).
Enabling poor families to live in better conditions in rural areas will reduce inequality, lead to better health and hopefully stimulate lasting rural development. Students who have taken part in the programme will be better qualified for employment in Kenya's growing construction industry than those whose practical training has been confined to single skill courses in the IoT's specialised workshops.
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