Education for all

Even though education is the right of every child not all children go to school. In April, the SOS Family Strengthening Programme in Mombasa, Kenya, arranged ten days of free holiday tuition for the poorest children in the community. Social worker Celia Wangui tells us about it:

"Education is essential to every child and every child has a right to it. So the month of April came with a blessing to many underprivileged children in the villages of Kisumu Ndogo, Shauri Yako and Mnazi Moja in Mombasa, Kenya, as the SOS Family Strengthening Programme organized ten days of holiday tuition for children from the three villages. Community leaders identified teachers and three venues for the tuition, while the SOS Family Strengthening Programme provided the children with writing materials and the teachers with teaching materials. Meanwhile text books were sourced from the village educator at SOS Children's Village Mombasa.

One hundred and twenty three children attended the classes, including Family Strengthening Programme beneficiaries and children who had dropped out of school and were urged by the village elders to join. Little children, who had not even started school, also followed their siblings to the classes. The SOS Family Strengthening Programme team visited the centres where the classes were conducted, to monitor the progress and also to create awareness about the SOS Children's Village Mombasa and the Family Strengthening Programme. The children were happy to hear that soon the programme's co-workers were going to start a 'kids club' for the three locations and could not wait to show off their talent.

The holiday tuition was a great success, as all the children who attended the classes participated fully. Children reported to school on time and showed a great interest in their learning activities. One of the children from Mnazi Moja wrote an excellent composition about her village, highlighting some of the challenges they face in their daily lives. For example she wrote how some youths in the village, instead of involving themselves in constructive activities, take drugs which destroy their physical ability and end up committing crimes to get money to buy the drugs. This usually leads to early deaths, she said, and she fears that soon there will be no more people to help bring prosperity and fame to their village. Another girl from Shauri Yako wrote a composition to the SOS family strengthening programme thanking them for the holiday tuition and asked if it is possible for the programme to do it every holiday so that children could have something positive to do, instead of staying idle in the village. The children showed good self-discipline throughout the classes and there was very good cooperation from all the parents and the wazee wa mitaa (village elders). In addition, the juice and biscuits and the learning materials provided to the children motivated them a great deal.

The holiday tuition succeeded despite the fact that the ratio of teachers to pupils was low and there were not enough chairs for all the children who turned up. In addition it was challenging to combine and mark the work given to the children since they varied so much in age and there were some children who came to school hungry and dirty, without adequate clothing and displaying behaviourial problems. However, the children were generally very optimistic and participated well and did the assignments to their level best. Even the children whose self-esteem was low showed some sign of improvement.

At the end of the two weeks, every location where the tuition was conducted held a closing ceremony, where children were given awards based on their performance, behaviour and personal hygiene. At Shauri Yako and Mnazi Moja, caregivers embraced the occasion. One of them said that they had never seen such a thing in their community and they thanked SOS Children's Villages for making it happen".