Happy New Year and Thank You to All of Our Partners!

Posted by: David Omondi

Akili Girls in their Games Kits

Erick, Papa Emma, and David with the Wireless Internet Router we bought for the library

As we start the year 2015, we would like to take this opportunity to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our friends, sponsors and partners for working with us in the past year to support the underprivileged girls in Obunga through Education. We believe that investing in quality, affordable and sustainable education is the most effective way we can empower girls and women in our community, as no one will be able to take this education away from them and they will be able to use the knowledge and skills gained to not only help themselves but also help others in the community as they pay it forward. 

In the year 2014, we achieved tremendous growth due to the generous support of our volunteers and partners. Erick and I have always believed that we are capable of changing our community. This is why, after graduating from college, we made the bold step to come back to the Obunga slum where we were raised to be the agents of change armed with nothing but the education we had attained. It hasn’t been easy for us. Despite having a clear vision of how we want to transform our community through education and being 100% committed to this vision,  resources to help us realize this vision have been hard to come by. 
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However, the past year has seen us meet some amazing individuals and organizations who have partnered with us and connected us with the resources we so much needed to effect change in our community and the results have been unbelievable!
We are a true epitome of how individuals and organizations can work together, contributing whatever little they have to create lasting change in underprivileged communities around the world.

Dani helping Magdalene of first grade

Girls sponsored by Gates of Hope Org

Girls taking porridge at the school

Girls with their new pairs of shoes

With a $1000 grant from the Pollination Project, USA, we purchased an Internet router allowing us to access the Internet regularly and be in touch with our friends, sponsors and partners. We met a number of partners like the Friends of Kisumu Foundation, NL, Mama Hope, USA, Gates of Hope, USA, Tailored For Education, USA, Murakami Family Foundation, USA and Lifepoint Church, USA to mention but a few. We have worked successfully with each of these partners on various projects in the course of the year and we are indeed grateful for the unparalleled support they have accorded us.

Friends of the Kisumu Foundation, founded by our first volunteer Dani, has been a staunch supporter of our activities and has continued to sponsor the Imani Volunteer House where all of our volunteers stay when they visit our school. During her last visit, Dani, who is also a SEN teacher, took time to coach the girls with learning difficulties at the school. Friends of Kisumu also supported the school feeding program in the third and final term of the year and we are deeply moved by her generosity and friendship.
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Gates of Hope sponsored 15 girls at Akili Prep School. We also had about 20 amazing individuals who sponsored about 31 girls at the school and this has really had a positive impact in their lives. The girls are able to get books, meals and a quality education without their classes being interrupted, unlike before, when we would send them home to get school fees. How wonderful it is to have the sponsored girls not worry about where their school fees will come from!

An example of the sort of uniform girls formerly wore

Girls would wear different pullovers/sweaters as well

The girls in their new uniforms

Baby class immaculately dressed

Tailored for Education provided 75 girls with new school uniforms. This was a great blessing for our community and a unique way to invest in the education of these girls. With the biting poverty in the slum, many parents cannot afford to feed their families, buy books/school supplies, pay school fees and buy school uniforms. Prior to this funding, our school was awash with different shades of school uniforms (some blue, grey and others green) while some students came to school in civilian clothes for lack of school uniforms. It wasn’t a good representation of the school that we wanted to be. This funding has also lessened the financial burden on the parents allowing them to channel their meager income to meeting other financial obligations. It has been wonderful seeing our girls immaculately dressed in their new uniforms. The uniforms have brought a sense of equality among our girls and bolstered their decorum in the slum. We are optimistic that this sense of dignity will be translated into better performance as the girls continue with their education and go on to realize their dreams. ​

The advocates and our teachers taking the girls for a physical education exercise

Watching a movie at the Akili library

Greenhouses at the Maendeleo Farm at Obunga

Construction of the new classrooms in progress

With the advocates at the gated farm they helped us to establish

Mama Hope partnered with us on the sustainable farm and school building project. It has been wonderful working with our first advocates Sara and Julianne who stayed with us in Kenya for 3 months from October to December 2014. Through their support we were able to buy a big parcel of land in Obunga where we have set up the Akili Farm. We have set up 3 green houses and we are growing tomatoes and indigenous vegetables to feed the children and sell surplus to generate income for the school. We also have a maize farm in the village where we grow corn/maize for the school feeding program. Their efforts also saw us start building a boarding school for our girls in the outskirts of Kisumu. The foundations are done and we are continuing with the work as we wait for the arrival of another advocate, Ali, in mid-January.

From helping the girls to use computers at the Akili Library, doing receipts and budgets, blogging and raising funds on-line, compiling and sending weekly progress reports, teaching the girls poems/songs/plays like Joy and the 3 lions, taking them for physical education/yoga, buying supplies and cleaning the library to conducting teacher surveys, the advocates were a great inspiration to us as they worked tirelessly to ensure that we get all of the resources we needed to support the girls in our community. We have immensely enjoyed working with this great organisation whose approach to development work is very unique. Working with them, we are able to decide what we want for our community based on our vision for the school. And, they have been there for us; listening to our needs and connecting us with the resources we need to put our dreams into action, whether it is building a toilet, buying a greenhouse kit for the farm, making desks for the girls or constructing a classroom.

Erick in his Life Point Church Team t-shirt

We are also partnering with a team from Life Point Church, USA and 2 volunteers from Ireland who are coming to Kenya in 3 weeks to partner with us to love on the girls and build classrooms for the children. This will be a life changing experience for all of us as we join hands with volunteers and the local community to build classrooms for the girls. The team will work alongside the local masons; ferrying building materials like sand, ballast, building stones and actively participating in the actual construction work. Most of the volunteers in this team sponsor girls at the Akili Prep School and this will be a great opportunity for them to reconnect with their sponsored girls and see firsthand the difference they are making in their lives and in our community.

Overall, 2014 was a great year for us and, with your support, we are encouraged to continue giving underprivileged girls in Obunga and its environs the chance to get quality education that will ultimately empower them to break free from the yoke of poverty. Our plan is to build a sustainable boarding school for underprivileged girls in Obunga slum and the greater Kisumu County. 

Currently, we only support girls as long as they attend Akili Prep School and live within Obunga slum. When their parents relocate from Obunga slum, either to look for greener pastures in other towns, go back to the village or pass away and they have no one to stay with, we cannot support them anymore. This has seen us loose students like Maya whose mother passed away recently. We want to change this trend by building a boarding school to ensure that the girls can stay at school and that our support to them is not tied to their parents staying in the slum. 
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We take this opportunity to thank you all for your support during the year. We are optimistic that we will continue to work together with you this year and achieve even greater success. Our priority is to construct classrooms and a boarding house for the girls and not only scale the production of vegetables at the farm but also diversify it by keeping chicken for both eggs and meat that will see us generate more income to sustain the school.

We believe that with your help we can realize our dream of empowering our girls through education and give many more girls a life changing opportunity to better their lives. We welcome you all to partner with us in 2015, whether as a volunteer coming for a few weeks, a sponsor giving $25 monthly to support a child, a partner organisation building a classroom/boarding house/dining hall/kitchen or a small team coming to work with us on the ground to make a difference in the lives of these girls. For further information on how to get involved, please contact us at [email protected].

God bless you! Thank you! Happy 2015!!