Educate a child from Kibagare Slum at St Martins

Greetings from St Martins school and the KIbagare community,

We hope that all is well and that the end of the year is off to a good start. All is well here at school, and we have had a good last quarter of the year.

This year marked the end of the famine that was with us for the last four years. We have had some rains in April- June and also in November. Even with the rains, we face a huge challenge of food insecurity due to rains, crop failure, and displacement in some areas.

The high cost of living and increased taxation, unemployment, and poverty are still major problems here, especially for the community and the children in KIbagare slums and many other slums in Nairobi.

Even with the much happening, we are grateful for your continued support. Below are some of our achievements.

Education:  the third term of the ear is a short term. It started on the 25th of August and to the 25th Of October 2023. November is the month for national exams for students joining Junior high, grade 8, and form 4 graduates. 80 students in Grade 6, 80 students in Grade 8, and 67 students in Form 4 sat their national exams in November. The results for grades 6 and grade 8 are out and the school has performed very well with two students getting above 400 marks. We are optimistic that the results for the High school will be even better. We will be sure to send an update.

St Martins Boys High School is open thanks to our partners and the Assumption Sisters. 14 boys from our primary school are currently admitted at St Martin Boys through the boys' outreach program. We have more boys that have graduated and they will need to be helped to get to secondary school. Help in the education of boys will go a long way in ensuring that children get the much-needed education.

We have 8 boys who have graduated from high school in the last two years and are back in the slum due to a lack of means to pursue further education. We have another 25 girls and 3 bos graduating in form 4 this year and, likely, they will not be able to pursue further education. We have been lucky thanks to our partners to secure a three-year college sponsorship for three boys to pursue Civil Engineering, software engineering, and accounting but there is still more to be done. Help for the graduating boys and girls will go a long way in ensuring that they do not all back into the slum after investing in them in the last four years

School Feeding and The Weekend Feeding Program:  We have continued with the Weekday school feeding program for the 800 children in Primary school. The long rains meant there would be a slight shift downwards in food prices and the availability of food though there are no guarantees due to high inflation, increased taxes, and a high unemployment rate.

We have also continued with the weekend feeding program for the children from the Kibagare Slum and other slums, A total of 32,342 meals were served during the period from Jul to December. The guarantee of. meal for the weekend helps reduce cases of children fending for themselves or being forced into the streets.

Counseling: Mental well-being is important and special in this community due to the many challenges, complex problems, and traumatic experiences that alter lives and families. Children are the most affected because they do not have options. Thanks to our school counselor

• 5 adults have been counselled 
• 239 pre-teens have sought counselling this year
• 110 female adults have been counselled
• 885 individuals have been taken through counseling

This has helped us understand the complex challenges faced by the community here and we look for ways to help them cope to the best of our ability.

2024 School Calendar year:  The schools closed for the long holiday on the 26th of October. We will start the New Calendar year on the 8th of January 2024. We have conducted the new year admission interviews for children joining Pre-primary 1. 138 parents and their children were interviewed. 

We are more than grateful for the support we have received this year and we take this opportunity to wish you all happy holidays. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Best,

Alfred Aswan.

Greetings from St Martins School,

Your contribution, support, and goodwill have enabled us to get here. We are more than grateful for the far that we have come.

We have made good progress since our last communication. We had rain in  April, May, and early June. We are expecting a good harvest in August and September. This is good news because it means the cost of feeding the children will come down.

Volunteering:  We had two volunteer groups visit our school in June, this is very positive as it is through these trips that we get to share our challenges, our impact, and the community that we serve here in Kibagare. The volunteer visits help highlight the needs of this community and we engage on the possible solutions to help in the transformation of the people in this community. We appreciate the volunteers who go out of their own way and use their volunteer time to visit us here at St Martins's School. 

Junior Secondary School: We have 87 students in our Junior secondary school. With the new curriculum students in Junior high school need a science lad, a creative room, and a home science lab for their practicals. As of today, they have been lucky that they can share the resources in our high school because we share the same compound. Thanks to volunteers and employees from Frank Recruitment, Rebura, and Revolent, their efforts and fundraising have helped raise enough funds to help us build a creative room and home science lab. We will have this done at the end of this school year.

School daily feeding Program and Saturday Feeding program: We have continued with feeding the 797 students who attend the school Monday through Friday. The students are fed breakfast and lunch. Food prices are still high but with a good harvest, we expect the prices to go down. Thanks to the donations we receive we have been able to feed the children for the better part of the last three months despite the cost of the feeding.

The Saturday feeding program is still on and we feed between 1400 - 1600 children from the Kubagae Slum and other slums within our location every Saturday. 15,000 children have been fed in the last three months thanks to the support we receive towards this initiative.

Education and Extra-Curricular Activities: The second term of this calendar year started on 8th May 2023. School closed this week for a two-week break and we are to resume classes on the 29th of August. Students have done three exams this term, Opener, mid-term and end-term exams. The exams help the school gauge both the students and the school's performance to determine how we are fairing and areas we can improve on. We have 80 students in their final year of primary school. the 80 students will be sitting their national exams in November of this year. This will be the last class doing the 8-4-4 system that is currently being phased out.

Our students have participated in athletic competitions with other schools within the county. they have done exceptionally well and we have two students who will be representing the school at the National level this August.

Music is part of the new curriculum and we have a school band. The boys and girls have also been able to participate in competitions and have managed positions 2 and 3 and will be representing the school at the nationals this August. 

University and Tertiary Education: We support boys and girls graduating from our school to colleges and universities. We have 9 students currently in colleges and universities here in Kenya, two are in Kigali Rwanda. There is a need to support more boys and girls through university and colleges as it is through this support that they can fully make it out of the slum and help themselves and their families.

One of our students graduated this July from the African Leadership University with a degree in computer science, a testament that with education you can truly transform lives.

Counseling: We have continued to offer counsel for our students, parents, and community members. This is helpful in identifying the challenges and community needs and thinking of ways and solutions geared toward making lives better for the children and the community.

• 90 individual counseling sessions have been done at school and 99 sessions have been conducted in households within the slum.
• 430 pre-teens have been reached through group counseling and psychoeducation sessions
• 472 adults have been taken through group counseling.

This is very helpful as it helps equip families with techniques for dealing with and working through complex family issues, emotions, and traumas. in return, most families are stable despite the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis.

Through the support we receive and continue to receive, we are able to achieve our set objectives in making life easier for the children and the community here in Kibagare. Your support and donations go a long way in helping us achieve the much we have set out and we are more than grateful that you go out of your way to do the much that you do and continue to do. THANK YOU ALL.

Best Regards,

Alfred Aswan,

Program Liaison.

Links:

• School Website
• Community Website