Fountains of Hope

Many children in Kibera are left behind in education. Many do not have the opportunity to complete primary school and transition to secondary school.

Shelly joined the TP school transition programme at the age of 9, after staying out of school for 2 years. Her mother is a single parent and the sole breadwinner of their family. Shelly is the first child and naturally she is expected to help look after her 2 younger brothers while her mother is out looking for work. This forced Shelly to grow up and take on much responsibility at a young age.

Beatrice had been out of school for two terms and was nervous about going back to school, she didn’t know any of the other kids at the school. Would she make friends?

The Class 4 students were bouncing with excitement waiting for Teacher Esther to call out the next item. “A red book!” she calls, and the children turn running, leaping down from the playground to search for a red book. A few minutes later, the winning child skidded to a halt on the dusty playground shouting ‘bingo!’ holding a red book high in the air.

Teacher Esther was trying out one of the new games she learnt in our latest team training in Accelerated Learning. ZiziAfrique developed the Accelerated Learning Programme for children who have fallen behind in reading and maths. They armed our teachers with new games and activities to keep the children engaged and learning.

Reflecting on the training, Teacher Esther shared how different concepts build upon each other, like climbing a ladder. Through the training, she gained new tools for assessing where children are on that ladder. The ZiziAfrique team showed us how we can use simple items like sticks, stones and chalk grids drawn on the floor to teach.

We work with children who have been out of school for a long time, some have been out of school for years. Catching up in reading and maths is the starting point for catching up in all other subjects. We’re excited to start using our new learning as we open the school and transition programme in January.

There are more children out of school in Kibera than in the rest of Nairobi. Why is this happening? Let’s hear a few stories to understand why.

There are so many people living in the slums that the nearby public schools are packed with kids. Brian shared a classroom with 50 other students, all vying for one teacher’s attention. This did not suit Brian at all. Brian is super high energy and gets bored easily. He often missed school, fell behind his peers and eventually dropped out of school. Brian’s worried mother brought him to Turning Point.

In July, we hosted some of Turning Point’s Alumni at our school. The group of 20 young people came to represent a much larger group of alumni who have been re-connecting over the last few months via whatsapp.

You may well have seen the words ‘Back to School’ a lot recently as kids prepared for another year of reading, writing and arithmetic. New uniforms, new shoes, the all-important new pencil case! Well Globalgiving are giving us an opportunity to help send some more kids back to school this September. From the 24^th to 28^th of September they are running a campaign to match your first donation when you start a monthly donation to Turning Point through GlobalGiving.