Building a school   Building a future

 

Report from A MacMillan (Oct 10)

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Secondary School

Just four years have passed since I first called on friends and relations for help in raising funds to enable the Got Matar Community Development Group to build a new 600-place secondary school in Western Kenya. The combination of a generous response to this appeal and of hard and diligent work by both the Community and the local authorities has worked very well. The basic school infrastructure is in place. This month the first pupils, enrolled in January 2007, are taking their final school certificate exams. We hope that they will do well!

To have reached this point so quickly is an amazing achievement. I still find it hard to get to grips with the thought that this partnership between the Community and donors, has already enabled almost 600 children to attend secondary school, and that we can look forward to 150 new children coming on board every year in future. This will bring huge benefits to a rural community in which, until now, few children could continue their education after finishing primary school.

computers
Girls getting their first taste of computers in October 2010: Grace Andiki at left.
woodwork training
David, the woodwork trainer, explaining the workings of a plane

The school now has 4 large blue-roofed blocks. These include a total of 12 classrooms, a school office/teachers’ room, a library, a small multipurpose science laboratory and a computer training room. This year, with government funding, a mains electricity connection has been provided. Another big landmark was the start of computer use in the school, with the installation this month of 20 laptops in the computer training centre. These computers were paid for largely by friends of my eldest brother, George, in celebration of his 80th birthday.

The school is managed by the Ministry of Education which supplies a number of staff and meets part of the operating costs. Other costs are met by levies on pupils. Currently 173 of the poorest pupils, mostly orphans, have been awarded bursaries that pay some of these extra costs and enable them to buy uniforms and enjoy school lunches.

I can well understand that some of you who have helped to get the school up and running may now wish to end your support at this stage. However, there is still much to be done to improve facilities and equipment at the school, to raise the quality of the education that children receive and to support the moves to extend skills training to the community as a whole. If you feel pleased, as I do, with the results achieved so far by the Community, I hope that you will continue to help in these further exciting developments.

The next major investment in the school is for the construction of a 150-place dormitory for girls. This will enable many girls to stay in school and to perform better in their studies. Apart from saving them from the risks of walking to and from school in the dark, it will reduce the heavy domestic calls on their time when they stay at home. The dormitory is now being planned by young Australian architects who have set up an NGO called bricks + cartwheels (www.bricksandcartwheels.org). They are involving the community and pupils in the design process, and will use the construction for practical training in building skills.

Other facilities still needed include a full-scale science laboratory, on-site teachers’ housing and a school office. Eventually four more classrooms may be required to cut the number of pupils in each class and hence improve the teacher-to-pupil ratio.

The school badly needs more donor support for the continuation of the bursary programme on a substantial scale, with a goal of awarding at least 25 new bursaries each year. These are vital to enable orphans – about one third of all school-age children because of the HIV/AIDS onslaught – to attend the school. Most donor commitments have now ended, with the result that the programme remains badly under-funded. Annual bursary costs per child are expected to rise to £130 (Euro 150) this year (or£520/Euro 600 for 4 years), partly because of the need to pay for computer O&M costs. Please think seriously about funding a bursary or two!

Institute of Technology

From the outset, we had always envisaged a need to offer training in practical skills, but could not afford the necessary capital investment because of the other urgent calls on funds. Now, however, this has started and the aim is to progressively broaden the range of courses on offer. These training programmes will be brought together for management purposes to form what the Community is calling an Institute of Technology.

This year has seen the start of training in clothing manufacture (with help from The Besom) and in woodwork, both in rented buildings. The idea is that, in addition to offering training to school leavers and other members of the community, these programmes will sell goods and services to generate income. This will meet their running costs and eventually generate profits from which to fund bursaries for children at the secondary school, thus reducing dependence on donors. The woodwork class has already made desks and chairs for the computer training centre!

clothes manufacturing
Trainees in the clothes manufacturing programme, showing off their first products
women's centre
The Women’s Centre under construction

Also under construction (with help from the Chave Collison Trust) is a Women’s Centre that will provide counselling and training opportunities for women who have suffered domestic violence and intimidation or who have become destitute following widowhood or unwanted pregnancies. Training is intended to improve life skills (including reproductive health) and to help members become financially more independent. The members have set up a small catering business to meet the running costs of the Centre.

Other Matters

If you want to look in more detail at these developments, I suggest that you visit the website www.gotmatar.org that we try to keep reasonably up-to-date through regular progress reports.

We are very grateful for the continued assistance offered by our partner charities in UK (PEAS) and in Italy (Associazione SONIA). See Donations page for forms.

The Community Development Group is particularly grateful to the girls of Queen Margaret’s School in York for their continued support for the development of the secondary school.

This year, because of unforeseen commitments, John Curtin was not able to arrange the UK fund-raising tour by the Got Matar Troupe, as originally hoped. The Troupe is still rehearsing, and the aim is now to run the tour in 2011. We shall let you have full details, once plans have been completed.

electricity substation
The new electricity substation, installed with government funding
clothes manufacturing class
Students taking notes in the clothing manufacture training course
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