Team Lead’s Message
Dear partner,
It is always a pleasure to share with you our work and the progress we are making in impacting many children that at Elimu Fanaka we honorably call learners. I was recently in Malmo, Sweden and one of the partners asked me why we call them learners—I answered, “this is the term that the ministry of education in Kenya calls children in primary/elementary schools, and we love it!”
We are sharing with you our first Quarterly Newsletter for 2022 at a time when the results for the Kenya National Certificate for Primary Examinations (KCPE) for the year 2021 are out. We are thrilled to see so many partner schools improve their academic performance. This year, our leading candidate had 402/500 marks, and the average marks for all 7 schools this year was 250/500—indeed, a call for celebration!!!
It’s during times like this that we all are excited to see the best performers, celebrate them and find opportunities for how we can accelerate their education endeavors. Unfortunately, we forget the anxiety shared across learners who excelled and those who did not. The fact is that for the learners who, unfortunately, for one reason or another, were not able to make it to the coveted 350/500 mark this season, it means something else and maybe a repeated cycle of poverty for a generation that will take so much time and resources to break out of.
This month, I shared my thoughts about this dilemma in our Elimu Fanaka’s April blog post and what I believe as partners in education and the development sector, we could focus on and explore better ways to solve the challenge of access to equitable and equal education. I invite you to take a few minutes to read the blog and share your thoughts.
The first quarter of 2022 has been busy with the whole team testing, iterating, and implementing some of the projects and programs. We have seen a lot of progress in our various projects, as we are getting acceptance and appreciation within the communities we serve. And, so we wanted to share what’s happening at Elimu Fanaka through this newsletter.
However, before I sign off on my greetings and let you take a glance through these updates, I wanted to share a brief insight from our March Partners Connect. On March 18th, we had a number of partners, teachers, and parents joining us to share and explore the question of impact and sustainability. One of our teachers from Kighombo primary, madam Mary Mshote, shared a fascinating suggestion that we loved very much. We are eager to explore and implement it as it aligns with the new activity, “Klub Ujuzi” developed under the Mentorship and Capacity Building program—you can read the brief about Klub Ujuzi on EF at a 2022 Glance section.
Madam Mshote shared this brilliant idea that can help strengthen and add value to our capacity building for parents. Beekeeping—this is a day-to-day activity that community members in the region we work with practice on a small scale. Women and men keep bees on their small farms and harvest honey and honeycombs for sale on a small scale. Madam Mshote believes that, with support from partners and stakeholders like you and EF, the community can enhance this opportunity and create a large-scale project to help these families support their children’s education and break the cycle of poverty and improve access to quality education for all learners in these communities. I invite you to explore the idea with us and to connect with organizations, companies, or individuals that focus on beekeeping to bring this idea to reality.
Thank you for taking the time to read our Quarterly Newsletter. We hope that you will be charged, inspired, and continue taking the opportunity to partner with us so that together we can impact the lives of these children as their future depends on us, and our future and the future of the world depends on them.
Thank you and my very best for April!
Kazi Mghendi – Founder & Team Lead
