Capacity building & Meeting at Tudor (Day 54)

Capacity building to improve awareness of discrimination 
My organization held a capacity building named “Recognizing and Tackling Oppression and Promoting Diversity”. This is a 3 hours short workshop and attendees are around 20 people that includes partner of the Ujamaa Center.

The assumption of the workshop is equity; every person should have equal opportunities and be treated equally. The famous video that treated discrimination reminds me. The video is “about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination”. She told the students, “The blue eye people are better than the brawn eye people”, made black handkerchief wrap around brawn eye students, and forbid the blue eye students playing with the brawn eye students. The results are obvious.

This video shows everyone has the willingness to take over power to other individuals or groups. In this workshop, the lecturer mentioned attitudes (e.g. assumptions and stereotypes) and power cause discrimination. Because we sometimes unaware of having the attitudes that cause discrimination, and this workshop improves awareness of my attitudes, I feel this workshop fruitful.

Joining Tudor community meeting
After the workshop finished, I went to Tudor, one of the slum area that exists Mombasa and currently we are planning fundraising to renovate the community center that is appropriate for nursery school. I joined the community meeting that held at the community center to have consensus to renovate the building if the fundraising succeed. At the meeting, the community people showed the strong necessity to renovate the building and give education especially for nursery and primary level.

The challenges of the people around the area are distance and cost. Especially they argued that nursery school costs Ksh 3,000/year and primary school costs Ksh 2,160/year for security, 6 examinations, games, tuition, and PTA, even if tuition is free in public school. They argued that 70% of the nursery level and 50% of primary level students are out of school because they can’t pay tuition.

The community center was build supporting by Mungano trust and the community is planning to start community managed school from next school year if the community center complete. Currently the building is uncompleted: they don’t have a floor and minimum number of chairs.

I made consensus with them that if we succeed fundraising that includes materials for building and facilities for schools, they will renovate the building by themselves by supporting Mungano trust support, and will keep clean the environment of the school and the playground that is now a garbage dump.

In front of the community center ― supposed to be playground 

Inside of the community center

Outside of the community center

Tudor area

Finally I went Maweni, Liconi area by crossing a ferry. This area has also a problem of land issues that government plans to expand the existed hospital and 3,000 of the households might have to evacuate. I feel deja vu of this problem.

Low Tuition Community School—Supported by a President’s Strenuous Effort (Day 46)

Today, I went to another school that exists on Shauri Yako, Mombasa. Renovating a private house, the school established last year. As same as the Matopeni School, this school is also community school.

When I contacted with her the day before the visiting, the president of the school kindly welcomed me to the school, and introduced me all the school system on the visiting day.

According to her, the school has founded last year. Separating the NGO managed school that is within 5 minutes by walk from her school and she was a president of the school, she decided to start her own school.

The school holds a baby class, Kg (Kindergarten) 1-3 classes, Grade 1-7 classes (Primary level), and the tuition is surprisingly low- Ksh 500 per term. Since the president has more than 30 years experience as a nursery teacher, this school is pretty organized. For example, the teacher makes the graphs of examinations to see the progress, applies teacher evaluation system, and providing afternoon nap for all students. She is also growing chickens and vegetables for funding.

Surprisingly this school provides lunch for all students, and the menu of the lunch differs every day (See the following picture). The president said that she realized some children didn’t bring lunch, so she started the lunch. She mentioned, “Anytime I saw the children eat lunch, I feel happy!”

Since this school is also struggling to gather tuitions from all students, because the surrounding area is also slum, and the amount of tuition is far less than the necessary cost, I wonder how does this school manage the management cost. I’m not sure that it is correct, but she replied that she managed the gap with donations. She is a very enthusiastic teacher as well as an aggressive businesswoman.

This school provides an ideal environment comparing with Matopeni School, such as lunchtime, afternoon nap, desks and chairs, and so on and this environment has been kept by the president’s strenuous effort.

The quality of education is affected by cost, but gathering tuition from all pupils is difficult in slum areas, keeping quality education in the community school system is challenging. Also, relying on donations or funding from outside organization is also high risk in terms of sustainability.

Those toys  are also donations 

Chickens for funding 

Matopeni — Community School System (Day 44)

I went to Matopeni which is near Kongowea Market— among the largest market in East  and Central Africa, again bringing with chalks. This is the second time that I went there. At Matopeni, there is a small community school (Last time’s blog post is here) that holds the baby, Kg (Kindergarten) 1-3, Grade 1. Total of the students are more than 130, and those students learn one small classroom. This school has been managed by a brave and enthusiastic teacher.

“To the inception of the school was an idea that was generated by a England woman who supported the local women to start a school which she supported for a period before she felt ill and later relocated to England. The children were then studying under a tree and when Muungano Support Trust  build a social hall for the community, the children were allowed in and the hall became the class that currently host three classes with 129 children” (Last blog post).

This school is operated as a community school that the community manages the school operation. The system is similar to the charter school system in the US in terms community or individuals manages school, but the differences between the charter school and Kenyan community school is government subsidiary. The charter schools get government subsidiary as a public school but the Kenyan community schools don’t.

Community School System

One benefit of this school system is that the children can go to the school with low tuition comparing with private schools in primary level and public and private school in nursery level. Since private school has to pay Ksh 100,000 ($1,140) per year to its government in Kenya, the cost returns to children’s tuition.

Public schools in primary level Kenya is free, but a lot of school past its capacity, so sometimes they reject entering new students. Because of this reason, some students have to go to private schools even if its tuition seriously affects one’s household finances.

Also, the nursery level in Kenya is not free even in public school. Currently government plans free nursery education but it might still need time. Even in public nursery school, it costs Ksh 2,400/year and Ksh 200 for admission. This cost still burdens for the people who live in slum areas, even if education is the way that changes their lives.

In Matopeni, each child pays Ksh 100 per month, but half of the children aren’t afforded to pay because they are orphans— this area is still affected by HIV.

This school has a lot of challenges such as capacity (130 pupils for one class), facilities (no toilet, no water supply), lack of teachers, lack of school materials such as chairs, tables, textbooks, and pens. Under this condition, keeping the quality of education is difficult, but providing chance of education for children who don’t affordable for the current educational system is important.

One reason is that the children learn basic literature and calculation at the nursery level, so lacking those knowledge causes trouble to follow primary level.

The take away by visiting the community school is the system of the community school and knowing minimum operating cost and passion of the teacher.

Toilet area of the school on the playground