Success in Kenya Schools with The Virtues Project

In 2001, the Kenyan government introduced the Children’s Act to protect children from all forms of abuse, hence banning corporal punishment in schools. This left teachers confused on how to handle cases of discipline as corporal punishment had been adopted as the only means of disciplining students in Kenyan schools. Mwiyenga Primary School was privileged to be introduced to The Virtues Project in 2009.  The project fit in marvelously as not only a means to protect children from abuse but also helped curb truancy, absenteeism, and teenage pregnancies along with issues of discipline and poor performance.  The Virtues Project training has since been embraced by teachers, students, parents, and community members to help them live more peacefully by inspiring the practice of virtues in their everyday life. Since receiving Virtues training within Mwiyenga Primary School, the school has moved from being one of the worst performing schools in the county to being one of the best performing and most disciplined schools.  The virtues are helping build compassionate and responsible children. Cases of truancy, absenteeism and teenage pregnancy are at an all-time low and/or non-existent. TVP has helped raise awareness among pupils, teachers, parents, and the community on the importance of having access to quality education and living a quality life.

The stress that comes from living in poverty is a key cause of aggressive behavior.”— Senserrich

We help heal violence by training parents and community members on the practice of virtues in their parenting and daily lives.  This helps to ensure that we are sending the students into a supportive and equally compassionate society.  Along with Virtues training, we have developed several economic empowerment and support programs for the parents and adults in surrounding communities to help end poverty-powered violence experienced by these communities.

Your contributions have supported our less fortunate learners (primary, high school, and college) with uniforms, school fees, and school supplies.  These are just a few of the capacity-building initiatives beneficiaries of Virtues training have access to.  Your donations took care of the water issue where we now harvest rainwater from the tanks that were donated by VPIA via GlobalGiving.  Parents provide more support to the school and their children.  By forming Virtues clubs in the schools and training all teachers in virtues, we are able to spread the virtues to other schools and different sectors of society. We are helping others to ensure they recognize, support, and reinforce the practice of Virtues in everyday life.  Our success is visible even with teacher transfers as they transfer the use of Virtues into their new schools.  The Deputy Principal, previously trained in virtues while teaching in Kakamega, and now at St. Ignatius Mukumu Boys School, has trained the teachers there in the practice of virtues. The list of benefits is endless.  Performance has improved greatly thus leading to more students attending the school. One of our favorite activities to use in the classroom is practicing the five strategies and Virtues Pick. We do a pick every morning to guide both the learners and teachers where the learners appreciate and acknowledge the virtues the teacher has portrayed during the lesson and the teacher appreciates the learners who have practiced a virtue by giving out virtue caps and virtue badges. The Virtues help guide the learners both at school and at home.  Virtues have greatly improved the quality of life for all, learner to learner and learner-educator, child-parent, and parent-school interactions.

We are indeed grateful at Mwiyenga Primary School for your continued support and caring.  For the past three months, we have had a series of Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) Assessments through projects and written work, thus making it difficult to get time for anything else other than preparing learners for the Assessment.

New teachers receive virtues training on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesday is our Virtues Club day, where both teachers and pupils come together to refresh themselves on the Five Strategies and share life experiences as Virtues practitioners. Monday mornings at assembly, we do a Virtues Pick for the week. On Friday mornings at assembly, alongside the Virtue of the Week, we announce to the whole school the champions of specific Virtues practiced and we give them Virtue Badges. This has really motivated both the pupils and teachers and it has also brought parents on board who bring their support to the school and help in making our school a better place to stay.

Our class eight students have practiced assertiveness as we have not had any drop-out or teenage pregnancies.  It is a thing of the past at Mwiyenga Primary School.  Kudos to the practice of Virtues!

We are working with the Virtues and Community Development Project in Kakamega to bring our projects together as one.   We are looking forward to training teachers and parents in four schools, Mwiyenga and three schools in Kakamega town.

Thanks to the generosity of all of our donors we are happy to report that we have been able to provide 761 masks to our students, sanitary towels to our girls, foodstuffs to our lunch program for our less fortunate learners, additional support to our students now in high school and college, and we were able to buy and fix a water pump. Construction of new classrooms is underway thanks to government support.

You make a difference in our lives and make this world a better place.  Thank you for your caring and humanity!

Links:

• http://www.virtuesproject.com