JANUARY 2024 NEWSLETTER: THANKS TO YOU- 2023 IN REVIEW
"Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us."
– Hal Borland
As we reflect back on 2023, we are filled with gratitude for the unwavering support of our dedicated community. Despite the challenges that persist for many girls in the regions we work, we have found so much to be grateful for during our time in Kenya. Each celebration of another classroom built; each visit with a young friend whom we first met years ago who remains in school; each smile of a young child newly enrolled brings us joy and hope for the future.
Below are a few of the highlights we experienced in 2023. None of them would have happened without the support of all of you, the committed and caring community who support our work. To each of you, our deep gratitude for making the following a reality last year:
• New Day Secondary School Classrooms: Through our partnerships with communities, we successfully funded and built three classrooms at the new Mausa Day Secondary School; a classroom, laboratory, and administration block at Olmesutie Day Secondary; and the first two classrooms of the brand new Enairebuk Day Secondary School. Mausa and Olmesutie are now complete and officially registered and thus will now be supported by the Kenyan government. Additionally, in all three communities, regional government officials attended the opening day celebrations and pledged additional funds to build teachers' houses, dormitories, and solar panels or furnish new classrooms with school desks and chairs, greatly enhancing the capacity of these remote schools to offer quality education.
Irene and Yolanda take the reins on documenting our work! Photo: Kate Lapdes-Black, October 2023
• Primary School Enrollments and Team Angaza: Our 11 dedicated Team Angaza interns in the Loita Hills identified and enrolled several hundred additional out-of-school children in 2023. Combined with the work of our first cohort of four Team Angaza, these interns have now enrolled over 1000 children into primary schools across the Loita Hills, getting us closer to our goal of enrolling 75% of the estimated 2000 primary school-aged children who were out of school when we began working in the region in 2019. Remarkably, 72% of these children remain enrolled two years later. Our interns also provided reproductive health education to hundreds of girls and women and implemented local community improvement projects in their respective villages that furnished ECD schools with chairs and books and also built wildlife fences around these schools.
• Expansion to Naikarra: One of our most ambitious endeavors in 2023 was expanding our work to Naikarra, a high need region spanning 1000 km2 that currently has no day secondary school and a significantly high percentage of out-of-school girls. With the help of a small initial cohort of interns, we will soon begin identifying out-of-school children in the region and encouraging their families to enroll them into Naikarra's 40 public and private primary and ECD schools. Additionally, we are in the initial stages of planning new day secondary schools with three central communities – Elerai, Esoit, and Leshuta - in the Naikarra region.
Looking ahead in 2024, our goals remain ambitious. We plan to begin construction of two additional day secondary schools in the communities of Entasekera and llkerin in the Loita Hills; begin fundraising for the three new day secondary schools in Naikarra; and continue to identify and enroll out-of-school children across the Loita Hills and Naikarra regions through the efforts of our Team Angaza interns. Having now made significant progress on the foundational barriers that lack of secondary schools and low primary school enrollments created for girls' education in Loita, we also plan to return full circle to our original work by supplying reusable sanitary pads and reproductive health education to 1000 girls in Grades 6-8.
We are deeply grateful for the impact so many of you enabled us to make last year in Kenya and for the many lives your support has created lasting change for. Our wish for all of you, for our staff, and for every single girl and family we work with, is that you find much peace in this new year.