|
Posted by: David Omondi  In January Riley Orton Foundation held a 2-week Akili STEMarts Maths camp in partnership with African Maths Initiative from 9th January to 20th January 2023 at Akili STEMarts academy. The math camp brought together students from 18 secondary schools nationwide and local teachers from around as volunteers. The main aim of the camp was to bring students and teachers together in a shared learning environment, exploring rich ideas that go far beyond what is traditionally taught in class. In the first week, there was an initial planning meeting from 9th January to 14th January where teachers and volunteers met for a week to prepare for the camp and to be trained as Math’s envoys with excitement to support everyone to think through inclusive, fun activities. The volunteers were very excited throughout the training as they learned that mathematics can be taught using fun games, physical activities, and math puzzles that make learning more interesting and enjoyable for students. In the second week, students were taken through 8 themes that integrated technology and collaborative activities that included programming and Robotics, Modeling, mathematical thinking, puzzles and games, houses, physical activities, data science, and journals. It provided students the opportunity to learn about mathematics in a fun and interactive way, while also developing their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Throughout the week, students participated in a variety of activities and workshops that challenged and helped them learn new things. One of the highlights of the camp was a series of sessions that focused on coding and programming. Students were introduced to edblock a programing language for the Edison robot and they were so excited as they also learned to program it using barcodes, they also related this to real-life experience as they gave examples of places barcodes are used e.g in supermarkets to scan prices for good. Another exciting aspect of the camp was students learning maths concepts through physical activities and mathematical thinking. For the physical activities and games, they played fun games such as find the ball, buzz game, flag games, etc. that promoted mastering, counting, knowing multiple numbers, and collaboration. On mathematical thinking students solved maths without using pens or books, this allowed them to think critically to give answers. In the end, students appreciated and loved being taken through the themes. Overall, the Akili Maths camp was a huge success. We trained 10 volunteer teachers to be maths envoys. Students learned new things, developed problem-solving skills, and improved their critical thinking skills. Students left the camp feeling inspired and motivated to continue learning about maths and looking forward to more camps. Such similar STEM camps are important to students from rural areas since they do not have such opportunities frequently. As an organization, we are looking forward to making Akili STEMarts a STEM hub for more rural girls and boys to have the opportunity to increase their agency and interest to take up STEM subjects. Thank you to everyone who contributed and supported us and made this camp a success.
0 Comments
Posted by: David Omondi  In April we held 2 HIV/AIDS awareness sessions at Mboto Sunrise Primary School in the Kanyawegi location. and Dudi to doho talents reaching 200 girls and boys. During the sessions, learned about HIV/ADS prevention, treatment and care, SGBV, and where to report., We also address some of the common myths and misconceptions surrounding HIV and AIDS. It is crucial to dispel these myths and ensure that young people have accurate information and understanding about HIV/AIDS. Our initiative targets rural girls and boys in the Lake Victoria region who are at a higher risk of contracting and spreading HIV. Many of them engage in transactional sex for basic needs such as fish, food, lifts to school, menstrual hygiene supplies, and more. By providing them with knowledge and awareness, we hope to empower them to make informed decisions and protect themselves from HIV/AIDS and early pregnancies. It is not only about preventing the spread of HIV but also about achieving holistic development and equal opportunities for these young individuals. By staying healthy, avoiding early pregnancies, and remaining in school, they have a better chance of reaching their full potential and creating a brighter future for themselves. Our efforts in community sports, arts, and awareness creation in schools are a crucial part of our mission to #ENDAIDS. Through these sessions, we are working towards transforming education, promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights, and ensuring that all young people have equal access to resources and opportunities. We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with organizations like the Mercury Phoenix Trust, who share our vision and commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS. Together, we can make a lasting impact and create a world where all individuals have the knowledge, resources, and support they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives. Posted by: David Omondi  Gender inequalities continue to manifest in various aspects of society, including healthcare. In many communities, these inequalities are contributing to an increase in new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths among adolescent girls and boys. To address this issue, we organized a football tournament at Oyiengo Primary School, aiming to sensitize the community on HIV prevention, Treatment, and care. Adolescence is a critical phase in life, and the inequalities faced by girls and boys during this period have far-reaching consequences. In many communities, girls face limited access to education, healthcare, and resources compared to their male counterparts. These disparities contribute to higher rates of new HIV infections among girls, as well as increased vulnerability to gender-based violence and unplanned pregnancies. In our efforts to combat gender inequalities and reduce HIV transmission, we organized a football tournament at Oyieng primary school for the local girls' and boys' teams. This tournament served as a platform to raise awareness and engage the community in an inclusive dialogue on pressing issues. By blending sports and education, we aimed to deliver crucial messages effectively and foster a positive environment for change. In parallel to the tournament, we conducted participatory theatre sessions in partnership with Amazon theatrixs to address HIV prevention and its intersection with teenage pregnancies and gender-based violence. Through this interactive medium, we encouraged community members to actively participate and challenge harmful norms and behaviors. By facilitating open discussions surrounding these sensitive topics, we aimed to break down stigmas and establish a supportive network. The football tournament and participatory theatre proved to be effective in engaging the community and addressing gender inequalities that contribute to HIV transmission. By empowering adolescent girls and boys, promoting education, and fostering a supportive environment, we took significant strides toward reducing new HIV infections, teenage pregnancies, and gender-based violence. Moving forward, it is imperative that communities continue to prioritize gender equality, access to education, and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for all adolescents. By collectively challenging gender norms and working towards a more inclusive society, we can create a safer and healthier future for all. Posted by: Sheila Akoth Ouma - Mhub Project Coordinator  Dear Friends, We are happy to share that thanks to your support, 5 women have received seed funding of $50 each to finance their small scale businesses mainly buying fabric for tailoring business, purchasing bags of beans and maize for a cereals business, cooking oil, rice and sugar for a community shop business, fishing nets for a fishing ascessories shop and a mortobike spare parts for a mortobike taxi business. We are now training the next group of women on business skills mainly how they can make a budget, track their sales and know how much profit they are making. After this we will give them micro loans to boost their businesses. We are encouraging collaboration between businesses eg encouraging schools to work with tailoring centers by giving them uniform making jobs to help them make more income, fishermen to partner with fish ascessories shop for discounts and items on loans etc. We look forward to raising more funds so that we can give the women the microloans and grants they need to sustain their businesses and ultimately support their families. Thank you so much for your generous donations and empowering our women. Asante sana!   Posted by: David Omondi  Literacy session at Jimmy Junior Academy Dear Friends, The Literacy Garden has been a beehive of activity over the past couple of months. With the help of our volunteers Kendra and Josh, we successfully piloted the Bilingual E-Book Writing and Publishing. 15 girls created e-books and shared stories about their culture. The girls learned to express themselves tby describing how they celebrate christmas, Songs and Dances, Housing, Favorite foods, Drums, Religion, Languages etc. The girls also translated their work in swahili hence helping to develop heir mastery of both English and Swahili. Their stories have been published on our website as well as he Write Our World Org website. We are excited to see the girls horn their writing skills and become the next generation of authors, readers and leaders. Our storytelling and sexual and reproductive health and rights sessions have been on going. We currently have Young Women Christian Association- Kenya volunteers teaching our girls menstrual hygiene management and sanitary pad making. In the construction front, we have finished building the mini library where literacy equipment/books will be stored and accessed by the girls. We are also building a multi-sport playground/basketball court and roller skating paths that will see us use sports to empower the girls and bring the boys into the conversation. Over the next months, we are looking foward to secure funds to complete construction of the reading areas, shades and benches as well as an amphitheater. We also hope to conduct our first annual girls leadership camp at the garden by the end of the year. Thank you so much for your support that has seen us build the garden step by step and create a safe place for marginalized rural girls to develop their skills and talents through literacy. As funds come in, we will keep working hard to ensure that we complete the necessary infrastructure required for the full functioning of the garden. Thank you  Tablets for ebook writing and publishing  Mini library complete  Construction of roller skating paths  Multisport playground under construction
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
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  |
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
September 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed
About Us |
Sponsorship |
Donate |
Contact UsContact Page© COPYRIGHT 2023. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
|
|
|
|
|
|