Educating 70+ children in Mathare Slum Kenya

St. Benedict was fully operational before the lockdown of all schools by the Kenyan Government and was immediately seeing some hugely positive results.

In December 2019 ten children took the Kenyan Primary Certificate of Education.  Considering that this School of Hope has been operational for less than a year, the results were hugely positive.  The average score was 306.6 / 500.  Considering that St. Benedict is a School of Hope where homeless street children can find refuge and are fostered out to homes, it proves that given an opportunity, these children can thrive.  The nearest Government school, Old Mathare Primary, had an average score of 217 / 500 which means that the work that St. Benedict is doing has allowed the young people in the School of Hope an almost 50% value added level of attainment.  The reasons for this are many and varied.  The children appear grateful just to have an opportunity to escape from what appears to be a hopeless situation.  Most of our Schools of Hope have two or three supervisors.  Here at St. Benedict there are four, all of whom are educated to university level, trained as social workers and have emerged out of the streets themselves.  Having experienced what is possible, they are hugely motivated to show others who are in a similar situation to what they experience themselves, the way. Additionally the School of Hope is participating in everything that ChallengeAid provides such as talent competitions, chess, life skills, music, drama, football, rugby, cricket and volleyball.

The Schools lockdown ended this week and pupils are now returning to school. Mathare has also been under a curfew which has made evening lessons impossible.

Hopefully as from this week we will be back on track and resuming the positive work that was clearly evident before lockdown & curfew.

Unfortunately with the Covid 19 pandemic much of Kenya is not only in lockdown but also in curfew. government Schools have shut and as a consequence we have been advised that the Schools of Hope should also be closed down.There has been constant communication between our organisation in Nairobi (ChallengeAid Africa) by email & phone contact with our volunteer supervisors.When lockdown & curfew is eased we will be stressing the importance of hygiene (hand washing) social distancing, the wearing of facemasks & putting this into a newly planned lesson on our lifeskills programme which before the pandemic went to 3,500 + pupils who attend our 43 SoH's each evening.