Kenya School Project - Sharing the Excess

Ongoing Projects

Horizon Community Library

Project Name: Horizon Community Library

Cost: $20,000

Includes books, computers, container shipping, handling from Mombasa to Naro Moru, shelves and furniture

None of the schools we help in Naro Moru can adequately house books much less computers. The roofs leak. The floors are mud. There is no electricity. With a community library we can open the world to over 7,000 students, plus thousands of adults, at a central location.

For people to select and read a book or finger a computer keyboard will be an incomprehensible thrill. This isn't just a library. This is an economic ladder. Please help us move people up the rungs.

Open up the world to over 7,000 students with a community library in Naro Moru (Read More...)

Transform A Person Africa (TAPA)

Project Name: Transform A Person Africa (TAPA)

Cost: Mill $6,000

Includes two months rent, starter grains, licenses

The Nairobi slum Kibera is home to 800,000 people and increases by 60,000 each year. Kenya Works partners with TAPA to provide an education and a safe haven to orphans and vulnerable children and a workplace for teens and single parents. TAPA offers Early Childhood Development classes for three and four year old. The classes are wonderfully energetic, but the space is small. To help support itself, TAPA sells greeting cards made on site by unskilled young adults.

It costs $33,000 annually to feed, clothe, educate and provide health care for 60 children. To pay the bills Kenya Works and TAPA plan to build a cereal mill which will supply enriched flour to those suffering from HIV-AIDS. This plan supplies much needed food to the sick and much needed opportunity to the poor.

Karkuret Women's Group

Project Name: Karkuret Women's Group

Cost: $13,500

An additional $1,330 comes from the women themselves as labor or "seat equity"

Forty women were removed from their farmland more than 20 years ago as part of a government reforestation plan. They have squatted ever since and provide casual labor in surrounding farm fields. They own nothing but understand farming well. Kenya Works and the women have partnered on small projects and work well together. We now hope to build a cereal or posho mill for the women to own and run. They will mill wheat, maize and barley. The group will open a bank account and share the interest. Some of the profits will be used to sponsor microloans to their community.

Enterprise Development Centre

Project Name: Enterprise Development Centre

Cost: $35,000

The Enterprise Development Centre and Kenya Works have worked together on many vocational projects over the last four years including sewing and tailoring, baking, providing orphan school uniforms, goat projects, a school library, marketing edible oils and biodiesel. Those we serve are requesting classes in auto mechanics, driving, hair styling and agri-business. The tools and space are expensive. An acre of land in the area sells for $1,200.

Peter's Mushroom Academy

Project Name: Peter's Mushroom Academy

Cost: $5,500

Peter Muchiri is passionate about mushrooms. He thinks nothing of hiking two miles at 2 AM to his shamba if it is time to turn the wheat straw or harvest the mushrooms even though there are elephants in the neighborhood. His wife and three children live in Nairobi, but Peter must be near his work. He prepares the growing medium for the spawn which he gets in Nairobi and transports back on a mini-bus. He mists, sprays, harvests and packages the mushrooms. When they are ready he carries them on his bicycle over the hills before sunrise to the nearest market. With the most primitive equipment he fights fungus and spider mites. When things are good, he grows 60 kilograms of mushrooms every few months and sells them for $6 per kg. Peter is diligent, devoted and successful. Others want to learn from him. Kenya Works and Peter plan to add onto his building so that he can accommodate students who will in turn teach others.

Kieni People Against AIDS (KIPAA)

Project Name: Kieni People Against AIDS (KIPAA)

Cost: $2,650

The 16 members of KIPAA have very basic needs – milk and money. That translates to goats. The plan is to sell milk and eventually goat meat, but each member must also drink 500 ml of goat milk a day to maximize the benefit of their anti-retroviral (ARV's) medication. Milk sales could reach $2 a day per person which would help pay for their drugs. They receive no assistance from the Government of Kenya or from the Global Fund. The group leader told Kenya Works that members face discrimination, but he added, "If you aren't careful, you stigmatize yourself before you are stigmatized".

Uhola Primary School

Project Name: Uhola Primary School

Cost: $45,000

In Nyanza Province of western Kenya (about 100 miles from Obama's grandma), many very poor grandparents are struggling to feed and educate their grandchildren. The children's parents are dead, and the children's care has fallen to people who thought they would be the cared for, not the caregivers. Kenya Works was the first group of white people to visit the village. Our mission is to finance school construction. We agreed to help because the present school is crumbling and has no windows. The classroom floors are cow dung, and that has to be reapplied every Friday afternoon. We also hope to establish a school lunch program after the school is built.

The grandparents are so supportive of Kenya Works's efforts, that a hundred plus came to plead the school's case. Despite their age and infirmities, the grandparents plan to make the bricks for the school from the mud in their back yards.

Maasai Joy Children's Centre

Project Name: Maasai Joy Children's Centre

Cost: $8,000

Ernest Kutingala masterminded Maasai Joy Children's Centre in Arusha, Tanzania because he wanted all the advantages of the developed world for the disadvantaged children near his home. Ernest guides people climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. His exposure to technology motivated him to build a primary school with computers. Currently, computer access is available to 2% of the people in Kenya and Tanzania. All access is dial-up, and the fiber optic cable is months away. For Maasai Joy to have connectivity, we had to construct a tower. Now we need the funds to hire more full-time teachers because being ahead of the pack isn't cheap.

Mcedo Primary School

Project Name: Mcedo Primary School

Cost: $800

Per girl each year for four years

Mcedo Primary is located in the Nairobi's slum of Mathare. Mathare is home to 500,000 people and is a warren of dirt roads, illegal liquor stills, wood shacks and the much feared and outlawed Mungiki squad. Mcedo Primary has 126 girls and 137 boys. The school provides porridge mid-morning which for some is the only meal in a day. Mcedo needs a kitchen, classrooms, food stuffs, fuel, plates, cups, plastic bags, water tanks, wheelbarrows, balls, games, underwear and sanitary napkins. To start, Kenya Works hopes to provide high school scholarships for poor but bright and deserving 12 and 13 year-old girls. They must go to boarding schools to remove them from Mathare. If they aren't educated they will be married off or resort to prostitution.

Nyange, Gitero and Gitanga Primary Schools

Project Name: Nyange, Gitero and Gitanga Primary Schools

Cost: $900

Cost for connection to the grid

All three schools are in Naro Moru and face many of the same needs: no uniforms for orphans, electricity, new roofs, cement floors, clean water tanks, outdoor toilets and the desire for a school library. It is difficult to imagine schools without these basic necessities. In many Kenyan schools they are luxuries. For us to connect a school to the electric grid would be a victory.