The African Child Sport & Education Fund Needs You

Joab Odera of Malezi School has been awarded a scholarship to attend university and play division 1 tennis at Winston Salem State University. Joab will be the secong player in two years in our program who has done so, after Rahab Mbugua joined Cumberland University. His attendance will serve to encourage more youth to achieve in their academics as welll as sports, knowing that their dreams can also come true

Date of birth: 30-3-1992

Every morning these days, Richard leaves his family’s home in the sprawling Kibera slums very early to walk across Nairobi River to his new school. Once in the compound, you will often find him standing there, admiring the school, and you can almost hear him say “I can’t believe that I can actually enter such a school!”

Richard is the first recipient of 2008 Sports and Education Fund. Richard’s family moved to Kibera from Kano (rural area to the west of Kenya) in search of survival following constant flooding of their small farm, and inability to grow any crops. He was three years old. He is the second born of four children; his older brother, Samuel Otieno is sponsored through high school by a doctor in whose clinic, Robert’s father, Charles Onyango, works as a messenger/clerk. His mother is a house help in a lower middle class estate in South C area in Nairobi, where she earns and average of US$ 36(20 pounds) a month from washing clothes and cleaning the home.

Robert’s family would like him to get a good education, but can only afford a non-formal school within the slum, with untrained volunteer staff, and where the school fees (without books or stationary) charged is US$1.4. and the pass rate in the national exams is hardly 15%. Richard is a very happy recipient of the education fund.