By Turk Pipkin | Project Leader
Things are going great at Mahiga Hope High School. Since Kenya is on an annual trimester schedule, the 2014 Senior class has already sat for the KCSE Exam - the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (a tough test akin to taking the SAT in the States). There is quite a lag in grading time, so we won't know for a while which students have scored high enough to qualify for a four-year University enrollment, but we're optimistic - as is Principal Jane Wainaina - that the school will have the most students yet who qualify for 2-year and 4-year college and university courses.
Big congrats to previous grads now in higher ed, including George Abrahams who many remember from our film Building Hope. George is now studying journalism at USIU/United States International University and was one of the top rookie's on the University's championship level basketball team. Way to go George!
These are big steps from seven years ago when we began building the first high school in this great community. Congrats to all the students past and present, and to the school's hard-working staff and board of governors. In early January, Turk will be at Mahiga to check on renovations of the last three dilapidated Mahiga Primary classrooms, and to help kick off the new year and meet a new class of incoming 9th graders.
Every student in every country is entitled to and should receive a full 12-year-education, and we love how Mahiga has helped lead the way for other new secondary schools we're working with in this area of the Aberdare Mountains. Just an hour's walk away, we've been working with the parents and staff at the even newer Laburra Secondary to finish the last classrooms and a new science lab. Two weeks ago, the Laburra students were able to take the chemistry, physics and biology sections of the KCSE at their own school instead of having to walk to Mahiga as they had done once before on an emergency testing basis). Congrats to Laburra Secondary and to our partners and friends at Simbara Secondary (jst a little further up the mountain) where anothe graduating class has now completed their 12th grade.
Mahiga and her neighboring schools are progressing in good ways, and the Kenyan government is making big progress in their march towards their ultimate goal of offering free Secondary education to all. Kenya now has 900,000 more students in Secondary than they did when we started building our first partner high school at Mahiga. That is an incredible accomplishment.
But Mahiga and other rural schools still have a deep need for funding of additional textbooks, and for the specialty teachers that often make the biggest difference in high school. Global Giving donor support for text books and teachers in the fields of arts, music and athletics and for librarians and computer instructors helps make a big differnce in the lives of hundreds of kids.
That makes me feel great. I hope it does the same for you!
(Check out the letter below from Miriam - one of the top Mahiga Scholars who was rewarded last year with a new bicycle!)
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