She's Making an Impact-Build a Classroom With Us!

Whether building and resourcing schools, exposing students to the possibilities beyond their communities, ensuring students have access to clean water and nourishing food at school, or helping students keep themselves safe, healthy and fit to learn, Village Impact helps students learn, lead, and thrive.

All of this is made possible because of you, the She's Making An Impact community. Thank you!

As you may recall, with your support along with other caring donors, Village Impact is tackling our most ambitious project yet—constructing and resourcing a 600-seat, all-girls high school in Mai Mahiu, Kenya. 

Although there is a primary school with 2700 students here, there is no secondary school. So your contribution is being used RIGHT NOW to help construct one of the 12 classrooms for a new school so students can access secondary education in the community for the very first time. INCREDIBLE! 

We're thrilled to report that there is excellent progress towards our goal.

• Land was donated by the community on which to construct the school. The land is adjacent to the existing primary school; however, the new school will be the first secondary school in the community. 
• A well was drilled at the site of the new girl's school. This will provide a clean water source for the secondary school, the primary school, which had no water source, and for families living in the surrounding community. Interesting to note is that in the local language, "Mai Mahui", the town's name, means "hot water." Although now completed, there had been a delay in installing the water pump on the new well because the water was an incredible 62 degrees Celsius! Our intrepid local partner was on an unrelated business trip and was able to secure a hot water pump for us in Dubai and bring it back with her on her flight. Where there is a will, there is a way! 
• A Village Impact Community Development worker was activated and met with stakeholders, including school administration, elders, Village Chiefs and community members. These meetings are part of a needs assessment process to determine the scope of psychosocial and other supports needed for students and their families and how these needs may be best supported by programming at the new school. 
• A community meeting was held with Village Impact staff, school administration and local government. Over 1,000 parents and caregivers, primarily women attended the meeting. We know an essential element in the success and sustainability of projects is community participation at all stages of project development and in the life cycle of the school. This community consultation meeting is one of the first participatory steps in our community-building process to create a collaborative environment for this undertaking. 
• The management team in Kenya and North America are developing the counselling job descriptions. Our aim is to have counselling staff in place for the school opening, which we anticipate will be in April of this year. 

Check out our first VIDEO UPDATE on the project HERE. 

Thank you again so much! None of this progress would be possible without your support and care for students. 

Links:

• Learn more about the Girl's School project
• Follow Village Impact on Instagram
• Follow Village Impact on Facebook