The end of 2011 brought a lot of new changes to the Education program.  We doubled the number of students attending our Learning Resource Center, we launched a mobile version of the Learning Resource Center, and we piloted a new student progress tracking system.  In 2012, the Education program has launched its first Mobile Library program at a school called PAG, where reading levels are high, in which books are brought to schools and children are assisted in finding the meanings for unknown words and quizzed on comprehension.  As the year wound down, the Kenyan government also announced a number of changes in relation to its revamping of the national Education Act.  In part, this included potential changes to both the examination and school year calendars.  It also included the recent and continuing closing of what are known as ‘bush schools’.  The term can encompass a range of descriptions, but here locally, it most often describes a school that is opened without any official approval or sanctioning, is often run by someone with no background in education, lacks any trained teachers, and is usually run out of someone’s home, charging fees for attendance.  As the bush schools have closed in the area, parents have been going from school to school in the district to try to try to enroll their children in public schools. The public schools have allowed many in but have also had to turn others away once they reach capacity. Continue Reading…

Posted from Suba Kuria, Nyanza, Kenya.

What a busy and exciting month it has been.  Full of a beautiful sort of chaos and a slew of new endeavors.  When school is in session here in Kuria (the cycle runs with three months on and one month off, so the children go to school January, February, March, and then get April off, and so on throughout the year), the Education Team runs our outreach programs which travel to different rural and impoverished schools each day and offer intensive and focused English language learning programs.  We visit each of the ten schools we work with twice a month and stay there for the entire day each time.

When school is out of session, we launch the Learning Resource Center, housed at an actual building on the main grounds of Nuru – Kenya.  The Learning Resource Center (Learning Center), offers students who drop-in each day different innovative workshops that focus on supporting reading, writing and comprehension, as well as a library where they can read books of their choosing and have facilitator’s assist them in finding the definitions for new words and test and support their comprehension.

In late November, the Education team opened the Learning Center (this is only the second time it time it has ever been opened).  When it was first launched during the previous break period, the Learning Center had a peak attendance of around 350 students.  We hit that number within the first week and quickly surpassed it.  For the first time, we are tracking individual students and their progress, which meant introducing a comprehensive registration and record-keeping system.  As new students arrive, we register them (collecting all the relevant student data), get their photos, assign them ID numbers, and give them a file in which to keep all their supplies and work.  Currently, after 2 weeks, we have around 800 students registered and see around 350-450 at the Learning Center on a daily basis.

Students playing a word game during opening day at the Learning Resource Center

In addition, the Education team also launched the first-ever travelling version of this program, called the Mobile Learning Resource Center, which was created to serve those populations of young people who live too far to make the walk to the actual Learning Resource Center.  The Mobile Learning Resource Center operates in a different, remote location each week and has served about 85-125 students during each of its first two weeks.

It has truly been one of those times that remind us what the Education program is all about.  It’s been incredible to see the commitment of these students to learning.  Hundreds upon hundreds of students have shown themselves to be willing to get up before dawn each day of their breaks from school to do chores before the sun rises and then walk barefoot and often alone for hours following treacherous and muddy paths in the rain, usually on empty stomachs, just to continue learning instead of going out to play with their friends.  They are so eager knowledge and willing to do whatever it takes to create a better future for themselves and their community.   It fills me with awe to see them take such joy in what seem to me to be the simplest and most commonplace things.   The thrill of using chalk or a crayon, the opportunity to read books, bewildered that such a thing as a dictionary exists and awestruck to be able to use one.

Every day in which these students continue to get up early and make the long and arduous journey to the Learning Center, they are showing just how important learning is to them and how far they are willing to go to obtain it.   It is humbling for me to play a part in this push for knowledge and growth, to arrive at the Learning Center each day to see them waiting silently in a single file line for over an hour before the Center actually opens, to see them come day after day despite hardships and fatigue.

Just registered and eager to learn!

There is a phrase in Kiswahili that means ‘we are together.’  When I approach each day and see them there waiting so respectfully, I think to myself how fortunate and honored I feel that ‘tuko pamoja’, we are together in this struggle for a better, brighter future.

The Education Program Leader, Victoria (Vicky) Tissian, teaching upper and lower case letters.

Greetings from Isibania! It’s difficult to believe that it’s been a month since Lindsey Kneuven left Kenya.  I’m so honored and humbled to have the opportunity to play a part in supporting Nuru’s Education Program and have been loving every busy and exciting moment of my time here.  I came on at a very interesting time when we had just scaled our outreach program to four new schools, which gave me the rare opportunity to observe the difference in knowledge, skills and attitudes between students at schools we’ve worked with for some time and those at the new schools.

Children truly have many things to fear here: hunger, illness, loss of family members and friends, early marriage, genital mutilation, and so on.  Yet, a daily and pressing fear for them is caning.  Caning in schools is illegal in Kenya, yet still, children are caned openly for simple mistakes, tardiness, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the most important lessons Nuru’s Education team teaches, I like to sum up in a term I hear them say regularly: ‘usiogope’, which means ‘do not fear’.  They repeat this term constantly to coax the children out of their shells, encourage them to try new things without fear of failing, and know that no punishment awaits them regardless of what their answers or questions may be.  Because of this, children in schools we have visited for some time are visibly much more active, engaged, and willing to participate, and even allow themselves the freedom to laugh, ask crazy questions, and just enjoy learning.

We’re here to support English language learning (one of the official languages of Kenya) and through it, all the positive impacts it will has on the futures of young people here.  As a team, we recently brainstormed ways to help students build the confidence and skills needed to overcome obstacles to reading, writing and comprehension, and discussed a number of techniques to help the students recognize and sound out letters as well as to break down longer words into more manageable parts.

The next day George, part of our team, was using a book about animals with a group of Class 2 (or second grade) students.  Animals are everywhere here.  When I walk home from work, I dodge swinging tails of cows, step over chicks chasing mother hens, and am welcomed home by the buoyant leaping of neighborhood dogs.  Perhaps because they are so common, a few children know some of the simple three-letter names in English.  However, some students, especially a group of very shy girls in the back of this class, were too afraid to attempt reading or writing very short words…or even to make eye-contact with George at the beginning of class.  George was patient and extremely engaging.   He used new phonetic teaching techniques he had just learned and put his own innovative spin on them.  When the children had no idea how to spell ‘sheep’, he asked them to make the noise to tell each other to be quiet and asked them how you would spell that ‘shh’ sound.  Then, he asked them about the ‘eep’ sound and the first student guessed ‘ip’ (the letter ‘i’ in Kiswahili is pronounced like a long ‘e’ in English), and George walked them through what a short ‘i’ and what a long ‘e’ sounds like in English.  With impressive skill, he drew a ship and a sheep for them and helped them understand the difference in the meanings as well.

When they were too afraid to try ‘kitten’, he asked who knew how to spell the word ‘kit’ and who knew how to spell the word ‘ten’, then showed them how the two words together make the word kitten.  They were thrilled to know how to spell a six-letter word.  At the end of the class, the group of girls who hadn’t even made eye contact with George at the beginning were jumping up to volunteer to write the new words they’d learned (and wrote them correctly!).

I have to say that the caliber of the education team is incredible.  They are brimming with brilliance and passion for their community, especially the young minds they work with day to day.  Literacy takes time. Change certainly doesn’t happen overnight.  However, I have been amazed and impressed to see how incredible transformations in understanding and confidence can take place in less than even an hour.

Posted from Nyanza, Kenya.

It seems like only yesterday that Thomas and I were passing the blog torch. In reality, it was about a year and a half ago that I assumed the role of Education Program Manager here in Kenya. The time has come for me to head back to the States and for a new Program Manager to step in out here in Kenya. The rotation of U.S. staff is an intentional part of Nuru’s model. The rotations are designed to decrease dependency on outside staff and personalities while reinforcing the importance and development of local leadership, to infuse fresh ideas and expertise at key times in the model’s implementation cycle, and to enable the team transitioning back to the States to stay at the forefront of leading innovations in their field, develop partnerships and conduct research that supports the team’s needs in Kenya.

We are fortunate to have found an excellent new Program Manager who will be leading the Education team for the next 7 months. Her name is Jessica Hansen and she brings with her a wealth of experience, a passion for education and poverty eradication and a wonderfully open, receptive and positive attitude.

Jessica began working with refugees along the Thai-Burma border over ten years ago.  Prior to joining Nuru International, for over two years she managed innovative programs for the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which focused on capacity building, life skills and leadership training, and community education for thousands of Burundian refugees, along with comprehensive case management and advocacy for hundreds of vulnerable unaccompanied refugee and immigrant children.  She also served as the Education Program Officer for Mercy Corps, a Program Specialist with the International Rescue Committee/Women’s Refugee Commission, and a Program Assistant for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).  She interned with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2005 and the Centre for Refugee Research in 2004.  She holds a Masters of Social Work with a specialization in International Social Development and a Bachelor of Arts in International Politics.  Her work abroad has focused primarily on education and the protection and empowerment of women and children in Southeast Asia and East Africa. She will be a powerful contributor to the Education Program’s growth and development and we are honored to have her join our team.

Jessica and I have been working with the Kenyan team over the past few weeks to get her up to speed on the history, development and current operations of the education team. She will fully take over management of the program next week and I will move back to the States to focus on strategic elements of the program, research, preparations for scaling and other issues. I will continue to work closely with Jessica and the team daily.

Today Jessica is out observing the team’s delivery of outreach programs to two of the new schools we are working with, Sorore and Nyasese. So far this week, we have shadowed outreach at 3 of the 4 schools that we have been working with since May. Last week we also shadowed a mixture of new and old schools and she had the opportunity to observe the variety of challenges we face – ranging from unique resource/learning level issues at each school, very low literacy levels across the board, our own staff’s need to grow their knowledge of effective alternative teaching methods, etc. Shadowing has enabled Jessica to see the practical implementation of our programs and get a better sense for our areas of strength and areas in need of development. She has observed the team’s delivery of various lesson plans and participated in their daily feedback sessions.

Over the next 7 months, Jessica will be working to solidify our implementation strategies of the outreach and learning center programs. She will be working with our team to continue the Uwezo assessments so we can use that data to further refine and tweak the model for maximum impact. She will be working with the team to set more structure around the delivery of lessons. She will also work with the team to refine our field manual and the lesson plans it contains ensure our work remains relevant and that the lessons truly produce impact. The team will work on tracking their observations, feedback, challenges and successes in an organized fashion so we have a better understanding of the anecdotal signs of progress as well as a better understanding of the school environments, hurdles to literacy, etc. Now that she’s up to speed, we will move forward and tap into her great experience and perspective to build on what we have implemented and developed so far. I’m excited to have her join our team to help move this program to the next level.

Posted from Nyanza, Kenya.