Education Zambia Project #34089

Tertiary Application Fees

by Kucetekela Foundation

Project Report | Dec 31, 2020
Resumption of Schools after Closure

By Racheal | Grade 8 Chalo student

After months of speculations on a new disease that had broken out in China and most of Europe, the worst happened in Zambia. We recorded our first case of the Coronavirus. Having heard experts and the ravaging impact of the disease in most parts of the world, the government closed all schools, most businesses, and churches after one case was recorded in Zambia in March.

Chalo Trust School and all other private institutions followed suit and the KF office was closed too for safety reasons.
After staying home for nearly three months and taking difficult online classes, the government announced that schools could open for exam grades only. However, the rest of the students would stay home and continue learning online from state television channels or school provided lessons.

Schools resumed this September for all the other grades though I must say it is different. We are expected to mask up and observe social dancing, harboring many activities. Despite the need to stay close to friends and family, I believe this is key to avoiding a break out of the pandemic in school. We have so far had no positive cases and continue to enjoy physical classes. Popular opinion among the less educated local community members is that the virus is for the rich. This made me fear for my life most of the time while at home because most people were not wearing masks. However, I ensured that I wore face covering all the time when in public. Because I am back in school, I feel safer here because everyone knows the extent to which this disease can weaken you and kill you.

After struggling with my social life at home and adjusting to being at school once again, I have learned to be open-minded and adapt to new changes faster. This year may have been challenging, but surely it has built my emotional and psychological capacity to be open-minded.

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Sep 3, 2020
Journey to ALA and First ever KF SAT Boot camp

By Emmanuel Chanda | KF Grade 12 Student

I have been acquainting myself more and more to the African Leadership Academy(ALA) from its mission, vision to its works since my admission to the missionary institution. I am excitedly part of the 2020-2022 ALA intake and among the young leaders working and being nurtured to develop the African continent.

It is always a great opportunity and chance to grow when a person is presented with a new challenge—ALA is just that for me. I have blended feelings about it from an energised spirit and raised curiosity including sense of self-discovery to a realisation of how much I have to work to ultimately achieve the purpose of attending the intensive two year academic, leadership and entrepreneurial programme. These feelings therefore wrap up around the idea of acknowledging what's ahead of me and knowing how I can best prepare for that future.

Confidently speaking, this year has been a preparatory one because I understood that part of gearing up was knowing who I truly was. During this period, I answered one of the most imperative questions every person, at one time of their life, needs to ask and answer this question—Who Am I? All this has construed how I feel about attending ALA.

Adding to what I earlier indicated, I recognised that the talk of preparation wasn't a mere objective, I had to actualise it. Fortunately enough, I was privileged to attend a week long SAT Boot camp hosted my the Academic team of the Kucetekela Foundation Alumni group. It was an intensive programme that I hope to see operating for the next approaching days.

It was not a mere Boot camp, it was a holistic and immensely engaging short course programme. I would simply describe it as an end note or summary—the hook— of my time in school, the summary that has equipped me with skills and knowledge to maneuver around challenges and events of a lifetime in vitally academics and the world around us. It complemented well with my preparation for ALA. It simply showed me how much more I can love my academic work by proving to me the power of adding value to information and understanding the profound concept behind it.

My overall experience from the Boot camp was overwhelming. It put my critical thinking and analysis skills to test and resultantly improved them. We had academic interactions with an intellectual aura. One of the amazing lessons we indirectly learnt was developing a positive and strong work culture. All thanks to the Academic team once again including all KF staff behind the establishment.

Among other preparations I'm undertaking include powerful academic tools such as Khan Academy for most of my personal work and learning including official SAT study guides, in the case of SAT. Adding to these tools, I am making use of various platforms that are otherwise considered to be for entertainment and one of such tools is YouTube which is a platform with enormous information.

These two experiences have enabled me to do one thing in common: To apply myself while I grow and know myself better.

Links:

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May 7, 2020
Life in Armenia

By Emmanuel Sakala | KF Pestalozzi Education Centre, Class of 2018

My name is Emmanuel Sakala. I was in the Kucetekela Foundation class of 2018 at Pestalozzi Education Centre.

I graduated from Pestalozzi Education Centre in November of 2018. After graduating, I started a paid internship at Bookworld Zambia. This internship was due to the partnership Kucetekela Foundation has with Bookworld Zambia. The internship was for three months after which the company awarded a two-year contract as a full-time employee.

I was doing the internship as a way of making my own money for the things I wanted. While I was working at Bookworld, I was applying to universities in the USA. I applied to about four universities and the closest I got to acceptance was a waitlist. I lost almost all hope of going to tertiary school. With the help of Mina and Uma, I decided to apply to pre-university programs. I sent my applications to the African Leadership Academy and UWC. then the day of the UWC deadline with one more document to be sent, Mama Nkowane called me with the news that I had been awarded a 100% scholarship to study business administration in China. She told all the requirements and provisions of the scholarship.

I was not really excited about the scholarship, to be honest. Under this scholarship, I need to provide my own lodging and food which something my aunt could not manage due to economic hardships. And I was very unfamiliar with the course itself. At this time, however, I had no options. I was not sure that this opportunity would come again and the places for UWC and ALA were very competitive. I sent the last required document to UWC even though I had already given up hope of going to a UWC school. I stopped work at Bookworld to start my mandarin lessons. Unfortunately, the Chinese scholarship required about $3,900 to be paid to the school and I had nowhere to get the money from. With the help of Mama Nkowane, I went back to Bookworld and waited to hear from UWC and ALA. I got to the final stage of the selection process both UWC and ALA and eligible for the interviews. I did the UWC interviews first. Before I could do the ALA interviews, UWC national committee told me I had been nominated to attend UWC Dilijan in Armenia. So I decided not to do the ALA interview. However, the acceptance for UWC was provisional, meaning that the school could either say yes or no to my nomination. I waited for almost three months and again gave up all hope. In early May, the school emailed and I started talking to the admissions officer. The scholarship was 100% including the plane tickets. I sorted out all the things such as medicals (with a big thank you to KF for paying for medicals).

However, I later encountered a problem with the visa application. I was not proactive enough and was waiting for KF to apply for my visa for me. Since I could not get my visa in Zambia, I had to DHL my documents to the Armenian embassy in Cairo, Egypt. It took a long time for DHL to bring back my passport in time for my flight, my original flight was pushed to a later day because my visa had not yet come. I got my passport two hours before my flight.

Traveling alone was exciting and scary at the same time. This was my first time traveling by plane and I was doing it all alone. I managed to reach the school safely. Armenia is an amazing place. UWC is a great place with so many cultures. There is so much unity in the UWC community with such an amazing support system of friends and staff. Recently, I had the opportunity of being hosted by an Armenian family for the winter break. In Armenia, Christmas is celebrated on the 6th of January. Over the year the new year period, we visited all the relatives of my host family. One thing I learned about Armenia is that they value family life and eating. Here you don’t choose when you are full, your grandma does.

Links:

http://kucetekelafoundation.org/

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