Educating orphans & the disadvantaged in Kenya

Hello from Kenya

We recently celebrated Madaraka Day here in Kenya. This is a national holiday that is celebrated on 1st of June and commemorates the day in 1963 when Kenya attained internal self rule after being a British colony since 1920.  We invited some of our pupils to school to join in the celebrations with a meal and games. A good time was had by all.

We hope that the following update on progess will be of interest to you :

This term we’ve initiated extra curriculum clubs such as scouts, agriculture and dancing.

Gardening Club

Pupils in our agriculture club have started planting passion fruit in our greenhouse. They started by planting 30 passion fruits and we expect our first harvest in October.

The Club is also busy rearing rabbits and chickens which they feed with kitchen leftovers. The manure from the poultry and rabbits are placed on the passion fruit for added soil nutrient. At the end of Term 1 in March, pupils enjoyed a lunch of rabbit and chicken meat.

Community Support

Community support is very important to us. Parents and guardians of our pupils regularly volunteer at the school helping on the land with weeding, planting and harvesting, or perhaps assisting our cooks in the kitchen with cleaning.   Recently we were gifted with 54 school sweaters from someone who had heard about the work we do and simply wanted to support us.  Our pupils were so grateful to receive them.      

Folk dancing

We were delighted that some of our pupils were chosen and trained by traditional dancers to perform and entertain guests during the Annual Little Miss Muranga county competition.  Our pupils dressed in a colourful display of traditional costume and did brilliantly.  We are very proud of their achievement.   

Scouts

Our scouts were able to attend the Founder's Day in February where they met with thousands of scouts from other primary and secondary schools. We saw their confidence and skills improve during the day.

Fundraising

We recently managed to raise a little over £400 at a recent Bingo event in Pembrokeshire.  We have another two events coming up shortly and one of our Board Members is undertaking a 200km Endurance challenge in June, running around the Isle of Anglesey to raise much needed funds.  If you'd like to sponsor him then please do get in touch.

Child Sponsorship

Sadly we have lost a few sponsors along the way this year, mostly due to the pandemic.  We are aware that people do not have the spare cash that they used to have.  Providing a free education to children whose families are living in abject poverty really does make an impact so please do ask your family, friends and colleagues if they would like to sponsor a child.  

Finally thanks everyone for your continued support from all of us at Roko 20 Academy. 

The school is doing really well under the capable hands of our Manager, with the support from his Head Teacher and staff.  

Its a great school and its doing great work for our community.  

This is our first update of 2022 and we are delighted to share with you our news and progress so far under the direction of our Head Teacher, Esther, who is making big strides with extra-curricular activities for the benefit of our pupils.  These clubs are a big hit.

Mathematics club

We have introduced a Mathematics Club for Classes 6 and 7.  We will introduce this to other classes from second term.

Scouting 

Pupils are being trained to enhance their scout drills. The scouts group gave a terrific performance showing off their skills at the school closing ceremony in December.  

Debate

The Debating club has made most pupils to gain confidence.  We have seen some improvements in critical thinking skills and in their English and Kiswahili.  Teachers are joining pupils together to work in collaboration with each other building on the teamworking skills.  All in all we are pleased with these extra curricular activities which has fully supported all aspects of their overall development.

Farming club

Headed by Teacher Christine this club has recently started with the work of clearing the greenhouse in order to plant vegetables. Over the upcoming school holidays there will be a duty rota for pupils to come to school for weeding and watering plants.

Music and Drama

This club is led by Teacher Mercy and its aim is to nurture pupils with artistic skills such as dancing and song composing.

Home Science

Teacher Jennifer will be leading pupils in design and cooking. Last week the group cooked chips! 

In addition to the clubs we are continuing with our Computer classes.  Our computers are now connected with unlimited WIFI and every one of our pupils is now able to have digital learning.

Teachers and pupils are also able to download learning materials online. The computer lessons are offered from PP1 right through to class 7.

Pupils in the majority of schools in our area do not provide such technology and we are very lucky to be able to offer ours the opportunity to learn these skills.

We are very lucky indeed and we could not have achieved any of this without your continued support.  We are so very grateful.   

Thank you from all of us at Roko 20 Academy.

We have come to the end of our academic year and would like to thank you for your support throughout the year.  This is an update on our work.  

Examination and assessment:

There is much improvement in academics at Roko 20.  Grade 3 sat for MLP (Monitoring Learner Progress) and all successfully completed the assessment. Our class 5 continued to be among the top 4 schools in Gikindu zone while Class 6 moved from 8^th place to 6th in the Opener exam. We are using the assessment and examination to gauge the pupil’s performance and be able to help them improve in their weak areas.  

Extra tuition:

The current class 6 will be sitting for National Exams from 28 Nov. to 1 Dec 2022. We continue to carry out free extra tuition between 7.20am to 8.00 am and 3.20pm to 4.20pm in the evening.  Due to limited time for the syllabus coverage we have provided an extra support programme for class 7 and 8 pupils which takes place on Saturdays.  

Volunteer:

We received one visitor from America working with Open Door Kenya Mission. Phillip and his group have helped in guidance and counselling for our 12 years and above boys and girls.

We constructed a new classroom over April holiday for Grade 5 and computer lab. The children had a spacious room for computer lessons.  

A group from Nairobi visited our school to give our pupils a taste of Karate.  A fun day was had by all.

Community services

The school encourages community services for learning purposes. Pupils visit the sick, elderly or get involved in community programmes. Our Grade 3 helped in clearing bushes around Kambirwa’s water reserve basin and also collected scrap metals which they sold using the proceeds to purchase classroom rulers and rubbers.

Grade 2 visited an elderly grandmother and gave foodstuff for the family.

As always, we cannot thank you enough for your kind support of the work we do at Roko 20 Academy.  Without your generosity we would be unable to continue providing children with a full-time education and mentorship programme.

Thank you!

Asante sana! 

Thank you for your continued support of Roko 20 Academy. Donors like you ensure we continue to offer a full time education to the most vulnerable of our community's children.

Right now our pupils are enjoying being back to school after a four week break and have adapted to wearing masks and being social distant.   

We are truly grateful to our donors who donated enough funds to enable us to build a new classroom for our current Grade 6 who will be moving up to Grade 7 when the new school year starts in July.  In addition we have built alongside this new classroom a classroom which will be used as our computer/library. 

In order to make way for construction of the new classes it was, sadly, necessary to demolish an original mud house.  When we purchased the school land back in 2013 this was the only structure apart from a few wooden cow sheds, a tin shed we used as a kitchen and an abundance of napier grass.  Over the years the mud house served us well and changed its functionality according to our needs.  It's been used as the Manager's office, a head teacher's office, a nursery, bedrooms, a video room, a makeshift library, a volunteer's office, and up to recently, a store-room.  The house has a low roof and would overheat in the afternoons during the dry seasons making it very uncomfortable to work and learn. 

The new brick structure is a big improvement and the classrooms are now spacious, airy and cool making it a much more comfortable learning environment.       

We are improving our school and the education our pupils receive, this is thanks to you and your support.

Kind regards

Tracey 

Links:

• Website
• facebook

A Happy New Year to all of our wonderful donors, supporters and volunteers. Despite all the challenges associated with this pandemic you have not let us down. Your continued support helps us to achieve our mission of providing a free and quality education to the most disadvantaged children in our community.

The Global Day of Giving appeal on 1 December 2020 resulted in a terrific response from you raising a total of £1,979 ($2,690). This included an amount of £485 ($660) in matching funds from GlobalGiving’s matching incentive.

We used the money from this campaign to purchase desks and chairs so as to comply with the Ministry of Education’s regulations on social distancing in class.   Further we were able to buy much needed classroom storage cupboards, text-books and uniforms. We were delighted to say that we will soon install Wifi to bring us right into the 21^st Century! 

Your generosity helped us to ensure the safe return of pupils and staff to school on 4th January after an absence of almost 10 months.

Pupils are slowly adjusting to the new system of wearing masks, having their temperature taken and using the sanitation provided. Rest assured we are doing all we can to keep everyone safe.

Thank you.

Links:

• Website
• Facebook page