Henfield donates £2,000 towards Kenyan school

Henfield Storage has donated £2,000 towards the completion of two classrooms at Sasenyi Primary School. One of our staff and his family visited the school during August 2009 to do some volunteering work, and quickly realised that money was needed to finish classrooms which had been left unfinished for years. Some money was collected, including that from Henfield, to buy hardware and materials from the local stores, as well as to pay for some local  builders to lead the construction effort. The two classrooms were completed before the start of the new school year in September, and consequently two more teachers have been provided by the government.

We're now trying to raise another £15,000 to provide desks, more classrooms and plumbing for water catchment and hygiene purposes. Please see our video on the JustGiving site for more information.

Backgrounder:

Sasenyi is a very poor village in southern Kenya. The villagers live in mud and dung-walled and grass-roofed huts, and have few if any possessions to speak of. This region is semi-arid at the best of times, and as you may have seen, East Africa has been suffering extreme drought this year, so there has been no rain at all. The rivers have dried up, the arable crops are all dead, and the boreholes are salted up to more than 1000 times our recommended level of magnesium in water. Nevertheless, village life continues, though the hardships are evident. Water has to be carried from 20km away and nearly all food comes from charitable donations (we saw a number of sacks from the UK!). The people are pinning their hopes on the rains which are due soon.

 The village school, however, seems to be thriving. Primary education in Kenya became freely available to all earlier this decade, so there are many children of all ages (up to 20 years old!) going through the education system. At Sasenyi, there are 650 children coming from a catchment area with a radius of 7km. The village has 13 classrooms including the two we helped to finish, but only 10 of them are safe (others at risk of collapse due to poor construction and erosion) so the government only provides 10 teachers – this means an average class size of about 65, though some will be approaching 100. The school day is long – 7.30am to 5pm, and the kids walk up to 7km to get there. Since this is a wildlife sanctuary, and there are LOTS of elephants, the kids have to keep their eyes open for herds on their way to and from school! The children seem to learn pretty much the same sort of stuff that our children do – the standard of knowledge is not noticeably different. They learn in three languages – the local tribal language, Luo (which is generally not written down), Kiswaheli and English. The academic results are better than the average for the area, even though the village is much poorer than some others. The discipline is remarkable, though concentration apparently drops in late morning because many children are only fed at school, at lunchtime – there is often nothing available at home for breakfast or dinner.

It’s difficult not to want to help these people. They lead such a hard life, but their attitude is fantastic. Everyone smiles a lot, and there seem to be few if any complaints. All the children want to learn – they know that it’s their only route out of poverty. We can support their education and help with water management at the same time. We have a strong link with Camp Kenya, part of Camps International, a UK-based charitable trust which assists with development in various ways in this part of Kenya and several other areas too. We would rely on Camp Kenya to supervise construction. 

We would like to raise funds for the following projects:

·         Supply desks for the new classrooms which we completed (~£20 per desk) - about 70 required

·         Plumbing to harvest rainwater from the roof into the tanks and to the kitchen

·         Complete the girls’ toilets – girls tend to miss one week of school per month because of the lack of facilities

·         Complete trenches to prevent uncontrolled soil erosion

·         Replacement or reconstruction of the older classroom blocks. This will include the safe demolition of the rooms which are falling down.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this; please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like to help us raise funds. 

Andy Crossley (and Cindy, Ben and Zac) via Henfield Storage