Educating 70+ children in Mathare Slum Kenya

To set the scene - there are 2.5 million slum dwellers living in the various slums in Nairobi. Although most live in shacks of 12ft by 12ft, many do not even have the luxury of having their own place to stay. St Benedicts especially looks after many of the homeless children in their vicinity, so in many respects, these children are the poorest of the poor. This has to be seen aswell in the context of 50% unemployment. 

A School of Hope (SoH) is essentially like a homework club where aspirational children volunteer to access a library of the newest and best up-to-date Kenyan syllabus textbooks and are supervised by volunteers in the evening, weekends, holiday. These aspirational children can see that the education provided by ChallengeAid creates an avenue of escape out of the slums. 

ChallengeAid has begun providing online lessons into 6 centres in Mathare and Kibera on a day-by-day basis in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and English. 

Although St Benedicts is not a zoom centre in its own right, many of the children who attend St Benedicts SoH benefit from these zoom lessons. We are now also conducting insets with the teachers from the informal schools in the slums (there are no government schools in the informal slum settlements) that exist around St Benedicts. We have been catering for 60 teachers on Saturdays in the various subjects for 5 hours at a time, and from the feedback that we have received from the teachers we believe we will be trebbling the number to 180 before the end of the year.

Due to the financial difficulties of many of these homeless schoolchildren, our complimentary sanitary pad program is even more important for the young girls as they reach adolescence. It is our ideal that not one day of schooling is missed by any girl through the lack of sanitary pad provision. 

We have also undertaken a sanitation program in Mathare providing latrines and wash stations. It is estimated that there is one long drop public latrine to every 50 shacks. We have so far created atleast 20 long drop pits and even some flushing toilets within a number of our SoH.

In addition to education, our supervisors are qualified to basic national level in rugby, cricket, football and volleyball. Some centres, using their own initiative are also specialising in dance and basketball. These sports programs operate once a week and provide a physical outlet for our young people. We also have clubs and societies such as chess, debating, music and drama. 'Mathares Got Talent' is one of the highlights of the calendar year by which hundreds of publics from different SoH compete in music, drama, dance and recitation. 

Lastly, but just as important, our Lifeskills Program entitled 'Girls Can' and 'Boys taking responsibility' are an essential part of what we do as an organisation and where the unwanted pregnancy rate in the slums with young girls is estimated to be about 60%, however within our SoH our rates are at less than 10% of this. 

Those who are reading this report who feel enclined to donate, we believe that ChallengeAid provides outstanding value for money and 'bang for your buck', as the average cost to sustain 1 young person in our School of Hope for year is only £10. Please donate generously!