Our volunteer Tony has been working hard in a small western Kenyan community of Eshibanze near Mumias. The school there has been supported by a young Canadian friend for over 6 years now but we need some help. The school has been reopened but teachers & 75% of parents are struggling financially. If the parents can’t pay the small fees, the teachers don’t get paid – its only 3 weeks into term!

Staff are not surprisingly unmotivated, exascerbated by insufficient funds to afford transport to the rural school. They are surviving on a meal of maize and beans and the children, we already know, suffer more. Back in 2010 a volunteer spent the Summer at school and literally saved the life of the grand daughter of the school cook. Already you’re thinking “how could a Grandmother let this happen” …. life is different here, very different. Silvia was given a special nutritional mealplan to bring her tiny little body back to health. Silvia’s mother had died when Silvia was still only able to breastfeed and was literally starving from malnutrition. Silvia’s Grandmother was struggling to feed her own children, and tend her small field of crops and cook for the children at the school, and find time to sleep in a small mud hut.

Silvia couldn’t walk but our volunteer Mona managed to help.

Tony, now has been able to raise funds and put into action “creating a safe and effective learning environment”. Now we need your brainpower to help keep the school running.

Nobody wants to create dependencies and AVIF is a firm promoter of sustainability so we are putting together a community-wide ownership plan for the school. We need a brainstorm of ideas to keep the school – and children – running healthy. A long line of corruption has been dealt towards the school over the years but the management team is now strong, honest and proud. AVIF has already received help to secure the school for the rest of term but we need help motivating the parents, inspiring them to sustain their children’s education when all else seems failed. We all know education is the key to success but the world looks different when you’re hungry and ill.

Can you help? We just need your brainpower. If you can donate then that would be awesome too but if you have an innovative sustainable idea please get involved volunteer@avif.org.uk or go to the Facebook Page.

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