Kenya School Project - Sharing the Excess

Kenya Works: Our History

Education Empowers. Kenyan children and adults want to learn and to earn. Kenya Works was established to boost Kenya’s poorest onto the bottom rung of the economic ladder by learning and earning. Kenya Works started in 2004 because a Wisconsin woman, Mary Stusek, believed with all her heart that to ignore Africa’s poverty is genocide from a distance.

When the government of Kenya agreed to provide free primary schooling for all children in 2003, a good idea ran into unexpected problems. The Kenyan government signed on to the UN Millennium Development Goals [UN MDG], one of which is to provide free primary education to the world’s children by 2015. Kenya eliminated the existing tuition fee of $16, a small sum, but enough to keep many children from an education. A million new students came to school, students from the poorest families for whom $16 was a fortune. Schools are over-crowded with few books, no libraries, no educational materials, electricity or running water. The system is stretched to breaking. Many students are so hungry they can’t concentrate.

In 2008, following Kenya’s national election promises, the government instituted free secondary education. At present it exists more in word than in deed. Based on national exam scores, many students don’t qualify for secondary schools. Placement is highly competitive. If all students did qualify, they would face a tremendous shortage in secondary schools. Also many parents can not pay the extra charges for uniforms, books, boarding and transportation.

For many Kenyans, formal education ends after primary school. Kenya Works and its Kenyan partner Help Self Help Centre attack this problem by providing job skills. Students attend vocational classes and conferences at the Enterprise Development Centre and in the field. Our students range from their teens to their sixties, women and men, married and single. The common denominator: our students qualify by their extreme poverty.

Kenya Works plans to expand vocational training by adding classes in agri-business, welding, carpentry and auto mechanics. In 2009 Kenya Works will open a community library in Naro Moru which will place a strong emphasis on vocational training resources including Internet access.

Kenya Works was established to provide the necessary tools for those Kenyans who live in extreme poverty and need extended to them a lifeline of learning, opportunity and hope. We take our responsibility seriously.