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Posted by: David Omondi  New teacher sharing her class results Dear Partners, We are happy to report that your continued supprt has enabled us to serve our girls well and successfully conclude second semester 2018. The two teachers we hired are working at Akili Girls Boarding school where we now have a total of 6 teachers taking care of 3rd, 4th, 5th grade students. This term, third graders registered marked improvement in their academic performance with 99% of the girls scoring 350marks. The overall mean grade for this class was 395 marks. In 4th grade, 14 girls scored 520 marks out of a possiblout of 600. The mean grade for the class was 524.9. We attribute this good performance to the commitment of our teachers to serve our girls. We thank you so much for giving to support these teachers so that the girls can continue to get quality education. We are currently building 2 new classrooms to accommodate our girls as they move to 7th grade and 8th grade in 2019 and 2020. We will hire more teachers to take care of the girls as they graduate to these extra classes. We invite you to continue Giving to support the teachers and the girls. Thank you so much for walking with us on this journey. Thank you  Another new teacher sharing her results  Exams in progress at Akili Girls School  Prize giving  New classrooms
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Posted by: David Omondi  Construction of mini library/bookstore Dear friends, The Literacy Garden is a beehive of activity! With your generous contributions we have started the first phases of construction of the literacy garden. We also secured 2600 GBP and Tenteleni Org UK and $1000 from our volunteer/supporter Ali Osborne and have already started construction of the mini library. Working with students from Chalmers University Sweden, we finished designing anfd building our first pretend play station; the pretend hospital. We have plans to add a pretend play laboratory, supermarket and kitchen. These practical learning spaces will go along way in helping our girls improve their vocabulary through pretend play. Our Volunteer Nicole Beverly of Rama Road Elementary, NC, USA visited and took our girls through letter writing sessions which were shared with her students back at home. Our literacy Instuctor Rose, has been doing an incredible job piloting storytelling and poetry sessions with the girls. University of Edinburgh students have been helping research barries to female literacy and empowerment for rural girls. This will better inform how we can improve the literacy program going forward. Kendra Nicolai and Josh from Denver US just arrived to start piloting write our world program. This program involves our girls writing stories about their culture and issues they care about and using a book creater to publish them online and sharing with other children from all over the world. This not only gives marginalized rural girls a voice to talk about issues that affect them but also confidence to become published authors at a budding age. We are looking forward to building a basketball court and finishing the rollerskating paths so that we can run our sports program for leadership development alongside the literacy sessions. Your partnership has seen us achieve so much and we can't thank you enough for your incredible generosity. It has been so fulfilling to see us dream for a literacy garden to empower rural girls and see it come to life simply because you believe in our dream. We still need about $6000 to complete our playground (mainly basketball court and rollerskating paths). Every donation, small or big goes along way. Thank you so much for walking this journey with us. We are excited to complete it and empower many more marginalized rural girls. Asante sana and God bless you all! 
 Pretend play hospital complete  UK students at the literacy garden  Student reciting poetry  Welcoming Kendra and Josh!
Posted by: Sheila Akoth Ouma - Mhub Project Coordinator  Dear Partners, Thank you so much for your continued support to give women an opportunity to do business and help their families. We have been very busy at the mhub in the past weeks welcoming both Lifepoint church team from Arizona USA and 2 University Of Edinburgh UK students. Two business women from life point church Toni and Elizabeth helped us to train the women on basic business skills and lay out a partnership strategy for the individual women we are partnering with. It was great to hear them share their expereinces of running successful businesses and mentoring women in business. 2 UK students are directly attached to the mhub and are helping us investigate the effectiveness of table banking as a sustainable way of empowering rural women as well as barriers that hinder young entrepreneurs from growing and scaling their business. All this will help us serve our clients better. We have succesfully recruited the 10 women who are going to benefit from these funds. To ensure that this program is sustainable, each of the women recruited are registering with $60 and are required to pay this in onthly instalments of $5 over 12 months. This is used to pay facilitators for various trainings at the hub and also to show commitment from the members.We are looking forward to start disbursing the funds once we reach atleast half of our goal of $1500 i.e at least $750. We thank you for your incredible generosity that has seen us raise $365 together. W invite you to share our campaign and help us reach this goal and empower womem to support themselves and families. Thank you   Posted by: David Omondi  Dear friends, We thank you deeply for supporting our teachers. First term have been successful so far mainly due to the two extra teachers we were able to hire in January 2018. With the funds we have received, we hae been able to keep our teachers in school ensuring that our girls are learning and get the support they deserve. Because of your support, we have retained $100% of our teachers ensuring timely implementation of the syllabus. Availability of teachers has also impacted positively on the girls. Akili girls do not miss school because they know that the teachers are always present. The teachers are engaging students in other after school programs including smart girl program which teaches self confidence and life skills to the girls, girl guides and sports program which focuses on reproductive health and leadership as well as sustainakility club which teaches the girls to be good stewards of the environment and grow food to sustain Akili School. With a teacher to student ration of 1: 15, our goal is to have 90% of our girls scoring above average in their tests. We are working with our new teachers by taking them on regular trainings so that they can learn ways of improving student perofrmance and caring for the girls. We also have different volunteers from University of Edinburgh UK, Chalmers University Sweden and USA who are working with our teachers on different areas including reprductive health, leadership and literacy. Thank you so much for giving to pay our teachers and give our girls an opportunity to access quality education. God bless you!   Construction of 2 new classrooms  Students from Edinburgh University  Posted by: David Omondi  Staff Meeting Dear Donors, We have been deeply blessed to partner with you to create jobs for women in our community who have trained as teachers but do not have jobs. Your donations of $10 or more have helped us to pay their stipends timely motivating them to keep doing their best to support the Akili Girls. We resumed school for first semester in January 2018. With your support, we were able to hire 2 new teachers for 4th grade and 2nd grade. The girls are now doing well being assisted by qualified teachers. We had our first monthly meeting with the Akili Staff and it is amazing to see all the women we have been able to create jobs for because of your support. Even though our government might not have had success in implementing the 2/3rd gender rule, we are happy to have over 10 women represented in our meetings. Last week our Co-founder David was in Rwanda with Amplify Org, a consortium of grasroots orgs working to empower adolescent girls in eastern Africa. it was wonderful to connect with other leaders out to give girls opportunities and connect to have a common voice to champion girls and womens issues. This partnership will provide opportunities for our teachers and staff to network in the region and continue to share resources and best practices to improve our work. We are still far off from reaching our fundraising goal of atleast $10,000, but we remain optimistic that with every $1 we receive, we inch closer and closer and continue creating more opportunities for women to be empowered economically in our community. Thank you for being part of this jouney. God bless you!  Team Akili  Akili Girls  Posted by: David Omondi  Dear Donors, We have come to the successful end of the final semester of the year at Akili School. We thank you all so much for your incredible generosity that saw us provide clean water for all the 44 girls at the boarding school for the entire school year. For the entire year, no student at Akili School fell ill due to contaminated water as was the case in the preceding years. Your generous donations ensured that we installed massive water tanks and harvested over 50,000 litres of water for the girls. We also had enough water for our gardens and through sustainakility club, the girls grew different vegetables and sweet potatoes thereby providing 100% of the schools vegetable needs! The girls learnt a lot about small scale farming and sustaining their school. We saved upto $200 that we used to spend to purchase water every term. This was directed to meet other important costs of feeding the girls at the boarding school. As we prepare to welcome 15 more girls to the boarding school, we feel that the current water will suffice. We are now directing all our attention and energies into building a LITERACY GARDEN aimed at developing the knowledge, skills and talents of marginalized rural girls and children to promote literacy, food security, environmental stewardship and healthy lifestyle and nutrition through establishing a literate environment for girls and children in a farm setting in South West Kisumu Kenya. Riley Orton Foundation is committed to improving literacy and through this contributing to nation building and sustainable development. This project will provide a safe and inspiring space; an open library in a garden setting where girls and children can meet everyday after school to improve their literacy skills, learn how to write, share their stories with the world, and learn how to value their own and other people’s stories. They will also learn how to grow food using simple small scale solutions based on permaculture and other regenerative agriculture practices. They will have the opportunity to prepare different meals in the farm kitchen, reduce stress through yoga at the garden, develop their talents in music, drama, dance and public speaking, and learn numeracy skills through pretend play shops at the garden. More info about this work is available here: https://www.rileyortonfoundation.org/about3.html We invite you to continue partnering with us by giving here: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/akiligardenandsports/ Thank you so much for your partnership and commitment to create access to free education to underprivileged girls. We couldn't have done it without you!  Girls preparing potatoes they grew at the school  Girls happy with their harvest  Girls at school
Posted by: David Omondi  Teachers and staff capacity building Dear Donors, We are grateful for your contribution towards paying wages for our staff. We hired 2 new teachers who have helped immensely in teaching our girls at the boarding school. With the support of volunteers and sunflower foundation org Australia,we also hired a computer instructor who taught the girls basic computer skills and etoys programming. We believe that hiring qualified teachers,we believe that we are on the right path to providing quality education toour girls. This semester,we held capacity building sessions with curriculum support officers from the ministry of education in a bid to improve their effectiveness in deleivering the approved govt curriculum. We are admitting 15 new students from Obunga Slum in January 2018. We are hiring one new teacher at $1200 to teach 3rd graders coming from obunga slum. Kindly partner with us again to raise funds to hire and pay our teachers and allow 60 girls to learn and lift themselves out of poverty. Thank you  Akili School Teacher  Akili School Obunga Campus  Teacher training
Posted by: David Omondi  Students using computers Dear Partners, Quality education is at the core of our programming. we endevor to do this through hiring of qualified teachers and build their capacity to improve the quality of instruction for our girls. With your support and about GBP 3000 and AUD $ 3000 from Hilden CHaritable Trust Uk and Sunflower Foundation Ngo Australia, we have managed to hire 2 new qualified teachers, a computer instructor and a sports coach to ensure that our girls get quality education. This year, we had 44 girls in boarding school and about 61 girls in day school. We are admitting 15 more girls in January 2018 as we expand to 6th grade. The girls have not done any national exams with other schools. Such exams will be done next year when they join sixth grade and start joint mocks at both the zone and district level. we will keep you posted. In the internal exams they sat for, 70% of the girls scored 350 marks out of possible 500 and this is a big improvement considering that most of the girls scored below 250 out 500 marks when they joined Akili School. We also introduced a number of enrichment programs to develop the girls into all round students. This is a break from the traditional rote memorization and over emphasis on exam based teaching. Such programs include computer skills training where all the Girls at the boarding school participate in and learn basic programming and coding, sustainability education which teaches the girls farming practices based on permaculture to grow enough food to sustain Akili School, sports program which teaches them team work, cooperation and build their self confidence, smart girl program which builds their self esteem by counseling and sanitary pads distribution to allow them go through their periods with dignity, debate club, literacy club among others. We have maintained our teacher to students ratio at 1:15 to allow one on one interaction of students and the teachers and improve quality of education at Akili School. High cost of living necessitated by drought really affected our operations. Maintaining the girls at the two campus proved quite a challenge. We look forward to continue to partner with you to raise the much needed funds to support our staff. Thank you  Akili teachers and students
Posted by: David Omondi  Watering gardens Dear Friends, “My school looks smart and it is big. First we have green vegetables and green trees in our school. We also have classroom block, kitchen and dorms. In our school we like watering the plants like mango trees and oranges. We drink clean water and bath with clean water. In our school we always use water carefully we don’t waste water like those who don’t use common sense." says Jovlet when asked about her school. Jovlet is 9 years old and in 4th grade, this being her 2nd year since she joined Akili Girls Boarding School. As a member of Sustain-Akility Club, Jovlet and her friends have learned how to grow their own food to sustain Akili School. With the help of Akili staff, the girls have reclaimed land from rocky ground at the school and established small garden plots where they grow capsicums, kale, spinach, common night shade, cow piece, tomatoes, beans, sweat potatoes, comfry, lemon grass, mangoes, papaya, oranges, zucchini and water melons. Last term, 100% of the vegetables used at Akili school were produced by the girls themselves. The water tanks at the school have ensured that we can harvest rain water which the girls use for drinking, bathing and watering their gardens. The about 50,000 litres we harvested and stored lasted us almost 3 months. We ran out of water one week to the end of school semester and were forced to close the school and send girls home since we dint have funds to purchase water to support extended stay of the girls. We were lucky hat the girls had just finished their end of term exams and the elections were also around the conner. We therefore continue to reach out to friends and wellwishers in the hope that one day we will be able to drill a well at the school and provide a permanet solution to our water crisis. We thank you for your continued support. Thank you  Drawing water from the tanks   Butter nut
Posted by: David Omondi  Dear Friends, I hope this finds you well. We want to thank each one of you who has donated to help pay our teachers. Together we have raised $290 for this project and we are very grateful. This year, it has become even harder for us to pay our teachers on time. There has been a high cost of living in the country with prices of maize meal, the staple food here retailing at an all time high price of $2.9 per 2kg packet. This has meant that we spend so much of the money we get from the few sponsors to feed the girls leaving none to pay the teachers. Without the teachers, our girls cannot learn. Your donation has given us hope that there are people out there who believe that qualified and well remunerated teachers are important for the success of our girls at school. For this, we thank you. We will continue to raise funds here and hope that more people like you will come up and help us raise enough to pay our teachers for even a year. Thank you so much for your support God bless you, David   |
Riley Orton FoundationRiley Orton Foundation (ROF) provides holistic education and promotes gender equality in STEM education to ensure girls and a community with the agency to realize their full potential Archives
December 2024
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