|
A
Brief Summary for people who buy How to End Hunger in
Times of Crises – Let’s start now!
by Ignacio Trueba and Andrew MacMillan
Got
Matar lies in Bondo District, near Lake Victoria, in Western
Kenya. The dominant ethnic group in the area is Luo, the
same group from which Barack Obama’s father came! It is a
rural area in which the economy is based on fishing and
small-scale farming, but, as droughts hit it frequently,
farming is quite hazardous. The problems of an unstable
climate are amplified by the highest HIV infection rate
amongst all the Districts of Kenya. This is largely due to
the tradition of “wife inheritance” amongst the Luo, which
offered wonderful insurance for the widows and children of
persons killed in battle, but is disastrous in the face of
AIDS. The result of the fact that more than one third of
adults are HIV-positive has been a high death rate amongst
people who would normally be the bread-winners, and a huge
number of orphaned children. Not surprisingly, the local
economy is in a very depressed state.
Primary and Secondary Schools
Grace Ochieng Andiki, a small-scale farmer and teacher, saw
that the future of the families of the area lay in ensuring
that their children would get a good education. In 2002, she
and other people of the area founded the Got Matar Community
Development Group (GMCDG) to provide a better education for
young people.
The GMCDG started by improving classrooms and facilities in
some of the 10 primary schools in the area. The Group then
decided in 2006 to construct a secondary school, so as to
overcome the situation in which, after leaving primary
school, children could only continue their education if they
left their homes and boarded in schools elsewhere in the
District – an option that was far too costly for most
families.
Construction of the new school began immediately at Got
Matar, which means “bare hilltop” in the Luo language, and
the first 112 pupils were enrolled in January 2007. In each
of the following 3 years, additional classrooms, as well as
a library, a science laboratory and a computer training
centre were added, providing the school with a capacity for
600 students. The first 90 “graduates” passed their final
exams in late 2010, and a number have been admitted to
Kenyan universities.
The school looks forward to evetually constructing a
dormitory for girls, an assembly hall and teachers’ housing.
Funding for the school has been provided mainly by
individual donors and small-scale charities in Italy and the
UK. Some facilities have been financed from local sources,
and the Kenyan Ministry of Education employs 8 of the 17
teaching staff.
The top funding priority for the school is now to raise the
number of bursaries from 30-40 per year to up to 80 per
year. The school is running below its capacity, not because
of lack of well-qualified students but because, under the
present economic climate, many parents and guardians simply
cannot afford to send all their children, as well as orphans
taken in by their families, to school.
Because of the economic difficulties, for the last 2 years
enrolments have been falling, and a lot of pupils have had
to drop out of school b efore graduating. For parents,
schooling has a double cost - payments to the school on the
one hand, and lack of help in the home – or on the farm – on
the other.. The cost of a bursary is just Euro 150 per year
or Euro 600 for the 4-year course.
Adult Education: Training in Technical Skills
Partly because of the AIDS epidemic and because of the lack
of training and apprenticeship opportunities, there is a
great shortage of people with techical skills in the area.,
and so the Community Development Group has sought to remedy
this. In 2010, they began creating the basic elements of
what is intended to become an Institute of Technology.
Almost 100 people are now taking part in 2-year courses that
well lead to national diplomas in sewing/tailoring,
woodwork, nutrition and catering, metalwork, and computer
use. With the exception of the computer courses, which are
offered in the newly built Women’s Centre, all of the other
courses are run in rented buildings.
The intent is that all courses should become self-financing,
earning income from students’ fees as well as from the sale
of good and services produced by them. Already steps are
being taken to produce goods for fair trade markets in
Europe, as local markets can be quickly saturated.
The Community has developed plans for expanding training
capacity to 300 students, with the construction of
purpose-built workshops and classrooms. The aim would be to
run courses in at least 10 subjects.
Safe Water Supply
Conscious of the vital importance of safe drinking water for
health, especially for cutting the rates of mortality and
sickness among young children, the Community has drawn up
plans for a water supply programme to meet the needs of over
10,000 people. Water will be pumped from Lake Victoria.
Meetings have been held on the proposal throughout the area,
and a committee has been elected with the aim of carrying
the project forward.
Book Royalties and Donations
When you buy a copy of How to End Hunger in Times of Crises
– Let’s start now!, you are making a donation, equivalent to
the authors’ royalties, to the work of the Got Matar
Community Development Group.
If, in addition, you want to make a personal donation to the
work of the GMCDG, please make payments, using the
downloadable forms (for Euro and £ sterling), available on
this website in the “Donation” section (here). If you need
more information, please contact Andrew MacMillan (andrew.macmillan@alice.it),
in either Spanish or English. |
